Before seeking examples of unreliable narrators in the literature, we have to figure out what does the term ‘unreliable narrator’ actually mean. An unreliable narrator is a character who is central in shaping and running of a plot, but whose credibility and credentials are suspicious. As a result of that, he happens to be enigmatic as well as eccentric at times.

An unreliable character keeps the reader intrigued and invested into the story for much of the time he has the stage for. He might force people into thinking and going deep into the nuances of the plot. By the virtue of being unpredictable, equivocal and at times over the top, an unreliable narrator becomes an engrossing element in the literature.

As for examples, we have many of them in our Indian literature itself:-

• The character of Balram Halwai in Aravind Adiga’s novel ‘The White Tiger’ is a perfect example of an unreliable narrator. He is the central character in the story who runs the plot. He is driven by a self-serving biased narrative while he justifies his actions through the argument of India’s class inequality. However, he does make the readers agree to his approach and the subsequent reasoning because they relate to the obscurity of India’s class struggle and social justice.

• Patrick Bateman, the psychopath in Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘American Psycho’ brilliantly blends reality with his own volatile fantasies, making people seriously think about the vagueness and lack of ethics in the consumer culture. He forces people to delve deeper into the phenomenon of human perversion.

In conclusion, it is safe to say that such characters are an important tool for any writer or author for that matter, to keep the audience glued to the plot. The very intriguing nature of such unreliable central characters, moreover, provokes the intellectual churning of the readers while they delve into HOWs and WHYs of the story, and which is why they are fascinating.