unreliable narrator

The story

Apparently coined by the U.S. literary critic Wayne Clayson Booth (1921–2005) in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961): see the quotation.

First known use, by meaning

• from 1961 A narrating character or storyteller in a story (such as a film, novel, play, or song) who provides conflicting, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise questionable information to the audience or reader.