This bachelor's thesis is an attempt of a comprehensive discussion of ethnographic fiction as a literary genre in the intersection between ethnographic writing and belletristic. Ethnographic fiction is discussed from a historical and theoretical perspective, followed by a presentation of various definitions, characterizations, delimitations and common characteristics of ethnographic writing and fiction, thus showcasing the meaning of ethnographic fiction for literature and anthropology. Incorporated in the discussion are also the relation between anthropology, ethnographic fiction and belletristic. An example of ethnographic fiction, which was subject to literary and content analysis, is Amitav Ghosh's novel The Hungry Tide, which is then compared to Annu Jalais' ethnography Forest of Tigers. Topics, discussed in further detail, are social marginalization of the area Sundarbans, the relation between anthropocentric and ecocentric views, the relationship between the human being and the environment, the human's attitude towards its co-inhabitants and the influence of the local ecological mythology on the human's relationship to the environment. The author of this thesis has, in relation to analyzing the literary examples, conducted a definition of ethnographic fiction and confirmed his postulations about the existence of common characteristics of ethnographic writing and fiction and the possibility of comparison of data, showcased in the works of Amitav Ghosh and Annu Jalais.
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