This is not to suggest that Baldwin was influenced by these other texts, or that he even read them, but rather that the confession form itself, in a time when so much about sex and sexual motive was kept dark and hidden, can have a special and searing intensity.
Information from Mr. Murad's confession formed a basis for an analysis prepared for United States intelligence agencies in 1999.
Some argued that this ambiguity, far from being off-putting, was one reason for his popularity with readers, especially young ones, who were bored with the self-confessions that formed the mainstream of contemporary Japanese literature.
In form, "Confessions of a Former Standard-Bearer," which Mr. Makine wrote in French (and which was translated by Geoffrey Strachan) is the recollections of Alyosha.
But it's also possible that Annie is making a calculated confession, in the form that suits her best.
Mr. Lanchester is the author of the wickedly entertaining "Debt to Pleasure," which was a sort of murder confession in the form of a literate cookbook.
Or maybe we spoke too soon, the story in chapter eight being a confession in epistolary form, confiding in A Letter To Elise (the Cure) an inability to maintain a pledge … She's probably better off without him.
I'm going to say two… Speak Bitterness, which is all in the form of confessions: "we never washed up properly"; "we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima" – everything from the smallest possible domestic to international and historical crimes.
The lyrics of the songs on the album incorporate bits of Madonna's musical history and are written in the form of confessions.
