Music like Roman à Clef

Roman à clef (French pronunciation: ​[ʁɔmɑ̃ a kle], anglicised as ), French for novel with a key, is a novel about real life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction. This metaphorical key may be produced separately—typically as an explicit guide to the text by the author—or implied, through the use of epigraphs or other literary techniques.

Created by Madeleine de Scudéry in the 17th century to provide a forum for her thinly veiled fiction featuring political and public figures, the roman à clef has since been used by writers including Sylvia Plath, John Banville, Truman Capote, Harold Robbins, Simone de Beauvoir, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Jack Kerouac, Victor Hugo, Blaise Cendrars, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, Naguib Mahfouz, John McGahern, Charles Bukowski, Malachi Martin, Saul Bellow, Hunter S. Thompson, James Joyce, Mary Shelley, and Djuna Barnes.