Which postmodern novelist is famous for adopting a non-traditional narrative form that questions the objectivity of storytelling and features metafictional elements?

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Metafiction and self-conscious narration define this area of postmodern practice, where authors make the fiction itself a topic and play with how stories are told. John Barth became a defining voice in this mode, especially through works like Lost in the Funhouse, which present stories that openly acknowledge they are stories, bend traditional narrative rules, and constantly question who is fulfilling the narration and how objective a narrator can be. This explicit foregrounding of storytelling as a construct—frames within frames, interruptions, and comments on writing itself—is the hallmark that the question describes.

Kurt Vonnegut certainly toys with form and uses playful devices, but his fame in this space is more about satirical critique and inventive structure than a relentless focus on metafiction. Don DeLillo’s postmodern territory centers on media, culture, and language, often exploring fragmentation rather than foregrounding the act of storytelling itself. Thomas Pynchon is renowned for sprawling plots and encyclopedic complexity rather than primarily for metafictional self-awareness. John Barth stands out for the explicit metafictional approach described here.