The article is about the state of dissolution of metanarratives in contemporary Croatian literature and literary criticism. Particular attention is devoted to the historical novel of the last two decades and to literary criticism which has defined it as historiographic metafiction. The incomplete realisation of postmodernist demands in these novels is usually attributed to the fact that in Croatia the history is not yet finished. The request of postmodern transformation of the genre of historical novel is put into connection with the ethical issues the Croatian historical novel addresses, in particular the novels Triemeron by Nedjeljko Fabrio and Trieste (Sonnenschein) by Daša Drndić. In the article we attempt to detect the return of the grand narrative, both in the case of criticism when it talks about the trauma suffered by others, and in the moral discourse within the novels.
