Identity and alterity (or otherness) are key concerns in the context of postcolonial studies, which focuses on the power relations between colonizer and colonized. Until recently, however, the centrality of identity and alterity for narrative theory has not been sufficiently recognized. While the final part of my chapter will focus on identity and alterity in postcolonial narratives, I will begin by considering two more general questions; namely (1) the status of identity in narrative and narrating (outside a postcolonial framework); and (2) the importance of alterity, difference, or deviation from cultural, societal, narrative, and stylistic norms that are constitutive of storytelling. The basic argument of the chapter is that issues of identity and alterity are relevant to all narratives, even though - for thematic and ideological reasons - they seem to be more prominently addressed in postcolonial texts.