From the Literature Network blog--this is a good everyday language account just for starters, not a scholarly research source. Note: Patricia Waugh's book is an early account but worth consulting; another early but useful treatment is Brian McHale's book on Postmodern Fiction..
Postmodernism is the philosophy/perspective that calls into question Grand Narratives or the existence of objective truth to give a general overview. Many adherents of postmodernist would probably tell you I am oversimplifying, but I think that broad definition covers it well.
Postmodern fiction is the fiction whose themes reflect the basic tenet that objective truth doesn't exist. It, therefore, tends to take the form of metafiction (fiction about fiction).
Patricia Waugh defines metafiction as “a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality” (2). This type of fiction “explores the possible fictionality of the world outside the literary fictional text” (2). In other words, since postmodernism has made the claim that there is no longer any Truth with a capital "T," that the existence of such a transcendental truth has been debunked, everything we can possibly know is a reflection of the culture we live in (even our most sacred truths). What this means for fiction writers is that there is no longer a need to write fiction that deals with transcendental truths. Instead a great deal of postmodern fiction deals with the very art of writing itself and the truth of political situations.
For example, a book that falls into both the Postmodern and metafiction definitions would be Philip Roth's Operation Shylock. The main character is Philip Roth himself who meets up with another man named Philip Roth who is posing as him within Israel to preach Diasporism (for the Jews to leave Europe and return to Israel). The point of this doppleganger is to demonstrate how Philip Roth's own identity is a social construct situated and formulated in a given historical context. Philip Roth just as easily could've been the other Philip Roth. In other words, the author serves as a larger metaphor for the Jewish community. Philip Roth talks about the Palestinian and Israeli conflict in the story and shows how much of a "fiction" that conflict is as well, that both sides are formulating these make believe identities.
A postmodernist wouldn't say the starvation and lack of supplies the Palestinian's suffer is fake, nor would he say that the Holocaust that the Jews suffered was fake either. The book deals with these elements throughout, but it does poke fun at the identities that formulate around these real events. There is one Palestinian character, George Zaid, for example who is a Palestinian intellectual who was trained in America and suddenly return to the Palestinian Territory and hate the Israelis and the larger Jewish public in a way he never did while living most of his life in America, positing the artificialness of his identity. This figure obviously pokes fun at famous Palestinian intellectual Edward Said.
Likewise, Ziad tells Roth the character, "the conspiracy against you in the Jewish press began at the beginning and has barely let up to this day, a smear campaign the likes of which has befallen no Jewish writer since Spinoza. Do I exaggerate?" (OS 136). Roth is thinking about his entire body of work up to this point within his story and how it relates to his life as a Jew and how the crazy events of his life reflect his work.
Basically postmodern fiction calls "truth" and "reality" and "grand narratives" we tell ourselves into question. All metafiction is pretty much Postmodern fiction, however not all Postmodern fiction need be metafiction. Fight Club for example doesn't really deal to much with the nature of writing and art (it does a little bit in very subtle ways), so it isn't really metafiction. But it is postmodern because it calls truths about masculinity into question.
How is this different from other fictional periods? For the most part 19th century fiction is about something, it has truths to reveal through the fiction. It isn't critiquing notions of truth, but rather is revealing to us the truth.
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