Historical Fiction
The novels in this study guide collection examine different historical eras and reveal how the facts and beliefs of the past still speak to our contemporary lives.
A Bend in The River, the 1974 novel by Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul (A House for Mr. Biswas, In a Free State, The Enigma of Arrival), takes place in an unnamed postcolonial African town. The main character, Salim, narrates the story, which begins when he moves away from his family to the interior of the country to run a town shop. Salim is of Muslim Indian descent, but his family has lived in... Read A Bend In The River Summary
Abeng (1984) is a fictionalized semi-autobiographical novel by Jamaican-American author Michelle Cliff (1946-2016). Born in Kingston, Cliff spent most of her life in the US where she taught at several prestigious colleges and universities. Abeng, the first of Cliff’s three novels, is a subversive history of Jamaica, as well as a coming-of-age story of bi-racial girl Clare Savage. Through her efforts to understand her surroundings and her own place in the world, Clare gradually uncovers... Read Abeng Summary
Published in 2007 by Delacorte Press, A Breath of Snow and Ashes is the sixth book in Diana Gabaldon’s successful Outlander series. Its story encompasses elements of historical fiction, romance, adventure, science fiction, and fantasy. It debuted at #1 on The New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list of 2005 and won the Quill Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror. Other works by Gabaldon include An Echo in the Bone (2009), Written in My Own Heart’s Blood (2014)... Read A Breath of Snow and Ashes Summary
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (2013) is a historical fiction novel by American author Anthony Marra. The story, told from an omniscient point of view, begins one morning in 2004 in the small Chechen village of Eldár. The night before, a villager named Dokka was captured and taken by Federalist soldiers, and his house was burned to the ground. Akhmed, Dokka’s good friend who lives across the street, finds Dokka’s eight-year-old daughter Havaa hiding in the... Read A Constellation of Vital Phenomena Summary
Susan Meissner’s A Fall of Marigolds (2014) is an amalgamation of several literary genres, including historical fiction and romance. Meissner is well-known for setting her stories against the backdrop of significant historical events, and this particular story was inspired by filmmaker Lorie Conway’s documentary about Ellis Island, Forgotten Ellis Island. Meissner intends to donate a portion of her profits of the book to the Save the Ellis Island foundation, which is working to restore the... Read A Fall of Marigolds Summary
A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1929, is the story of Frederic Henry, an officer with the Italian army in World War I, and his relationship with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. Some have noted the similarities between the main character and Hemingway, who also served in the Italian army as an ambulance driver in 1918, and his nurse, Agnes Von Kurowsky, who cared for Hemingway after he was wounded.The... Read A Farewell to Arms Summary
Indian-born Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry’s 1995 novel A Fine Balance is the story of four characters from diverse backgrounds whose paths converge in 1975 India. Maneck Kohlah, a college student, has rented a room in the city. On his way to inspect the apartment of Dina Dalal, he meets two tailors, Ishvar Darji and his nephew Omprakash (Om) Darji, also on their way to Dina’s to find sewing jobs.Dina hires the tailors to work from... Read A Fine Balance Summary
A Gentleman in Moscow is a historical fiction novel by American author Amor Towles, published in 2016. The story follows Count Alexander Rostov, a Russian nobleman who is sentenced to lifelong imprisonment in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.The Count must adjust not only to his new circumstances in a small room in the hotel’s belfry but also to the knowledge that his way of life is disappearing under the Bolshevik regime... Read A Gentleman in Moscow Summary
Winner of the Asian-American Literary Award, Korean-American Chang-Rae Lee’s A Gesture Life was published in 1999. Lee found inspiration for his historical fiction in the deeply disturbing news about Korean sex slaves used by Japanese soldiers during World War II.Narrated by a young Korean-turned-Japanese medic charged with overseeing comfort women in a camp in Burma, the novel provides a nuanced look at the psychological implications of assimilation and the pressure to conform. As the story... Read A Gesture Life Summary
A God in Ruins is a historical fiction novel by Kate Atkinson. Published in 2015, it is known as a companion piece to Atkinson’s prior novel, Life After Life, and contains many of the same characters. Set against the backdrop of World War II, A God in Ruins examines themes of sacrifice, secrets, family, and the way that war transforms people. Plot SummaryThe events of the novel unfold between 1925 and 2012, and each chapter takes... Read A God in Ruins Summary
Published in 1967 by Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (who also published under the name James Ngugi), A Grain of Wheat takes place in Kenya on the brink of its Uhuru (independence from British colonial rule) in December 1963. The historical fiction novel considers the effects of British rule on several residents of the fictional village of Thabai, many of whom suffered enormously after the real-life rebellion by the Mau Mau, or the Kenya Land... Read A Grain of Wheat Summary
A Hero of Our Time is a classic work of Russian literature written by Mikhail Lermontov and published in 1840. It exemplifies the “superfluous man” trope common in later Russian literature, in which a person of great talent and genius is unable to express these talents healthily due to personal and societal circumstances of some kind. The novel, a work of historical fiction, was highly influential for its critique of tsarist Russian society and for... Read A Hero Of Our Time Summary
A House for Mr. Biswas is a 1961 historical fiction novel by V. S. Naipaul. The story takes a postcolonial perspective of the life of a Hindu Indian man in British-owned and occupied Trinidad. Now regarded as one of Naipaul's most significant novels, A House for Mr. Biswas has won numerous awards and has been adapted as a musical, a radio drama, and a television show. Naipaul is also known for the works The Mimic... Read A House for Mr. Biswas Summary
Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year was first published in 1722. The novel is written in the first-person and chronicles the spread of the bubonic plague in London in 1665. While the first-person narration and abundant historical detail result in a text that feels like—and masquerades as—nonfiction, Defoe was only 5 years old at the time of the events, while the narrator is an adult man living on his own in London. Despite... Read A Journal Of The Plague Year Summary
The short story “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell describes the investigation of a mysterious murder in rural Dickson County. Glaspell explores gender roles in the early 20th century, the effects of isolation on people’s emotional and mental states, and the duty of neighbors to help one another. Additionally, Glaspell comments directly on the sexism of this period in American history and the prejudices inherent in the belief that women’s proper and only... Read A Jury of Her Peers Summary
A Land of Permanent Goodbyes is a young adult novel from author Atia Abawi. Published in 2018, it tells the story of a teenage refugee, Tareq, who flees his homeland of Syria, making the journey to Turkey, Greece, and eventually Germany. Tareq’s story is complemented by a second narrative, that of Alexia, a young American woman who defers a semester of college in order to support a volunteer organization that assists refugees as they arrive... Read A Land of Permanent Goodbyes Summary
A Land Remembered (1984) is a historical fiction novel by Patrick D. Smith. In 1968, the wealthy 85-year-old real estate developer Solomon “Sol” MacIvey arrives at his cabin in Punta Rassa, Florida, where he plans to live out his final days. As Sol reflects on his family’s history, the narrative moves to 1863, to the central Florida homestead of Tobias MacIvey, Sol’s grandfather. With his wife, Emma, and their six-year-old son, Zech, Tobias struggles to... Read A Land Remembered Summary
Is Grace Marks a murderess or an innocent pawn? Is she an evil fiend or mentally ill? Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996) retells the story of Canada’s notorious nineteenth-century convicted murderess Grace Marks. Grounded in the historical record where available, Atwood’s historical fiction novel probes issues of gender and class roles, identity, truth, and the nature of memory.Thomas Kinnear, a wealthy landowner, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress, are murdered in July 1843. Grace... Read Alias Grace Summary
All I Asking for Is My Body (1975) was written by Milton Murayama and is a fictionalized autobiography based on Murayama’s upbringing on a Hawaiian sugar cane plantation in the 1930s. Kiyoshi Oyama, the American son of Japanese immigrants, narrates the story using a mixture of Standard English with Hawaiian English Creole. The novel explores themes of Japanese filial responsibilities as opposed to American individualism and the treatment of Japanese Americans at the start of... Read All I Asking for Is My Body Summary
All the Light We Cannot See is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr published in 2014. This historical fiction novel alternates between the lives of its two central characters: Marie-Laure Leblanc, a girl who grows up in Paris and loses her eyesight to cataracts at age six, and Werner Pfennig, a boy from a German mining town who joins the Nazi military to escape working in the mines.In August 1944, Marie-Laure and Werner are... Read All the Light We Cannot See Summary
A Lost Lady is a historical fiction novel published by American author Willa Cather in 1923. Set at the end of the 19th century, this western novel chronicles Marian Forrester’s life through the eyes of Niel Herbert, a young boy from the railroad town of Sweet Water. The Forresters’ decline in financial and social position mirrors the decline of the pioneer era; the contrast between this idealized era and the exploitative capitalist one comprises the... Read A Lost Lady Summary
Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, which premiered at the London Royal National Theatre in 1979, presents a fictionalized history of the renowned composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of Antonio Salieri, a composer whose lackluster artistic legacy has been all but buried by time. The play begins on the eve of what Salieri, now an old man, believes will be the last day of his life. Salieri narrates and reenacts the story of his tumultuous... Read Amadeus Summary
A Man for All Seasons is a 1960 play by English playwright Robert Bolt. Though it was published in its completed form in 1960, it was originally written for radio in 1954. It was then adapted for television in 1957 before finally being rewritten for the stage. The original runs of the show in London and later New York attained critical and commercial success. In 1966, the play was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film... Read A Man For All Seasons Summary
A Man of the People is a 1966 novel by Chinua Achebe. Achebe, a Nigerian novelist and well-known figure of African literature, also wrote Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964). A Man of the People chronicles political unrest in an African nation that only recently gained its independence from Britain. The novel opens with the narrator, Odili Samalu, awaiting the arrival of Minister Nanga, also known as Chief Nanga, at Anata Grammar... Read A Man of the People Summary
Published in 2008, A Mercy is Toni Morrison’s ninth novel. Morrison, both a prolific scholar and author, centers the question of slavery and a pre-racial America in this historical fiction novel. A Mercy was chosen as one of the best books in the year of its release by the New York Times. Morrison is also known for the award-winning novels The Bluest Eye (1970), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved (1987), among many others.Plot SummaryA Mercy... Read A Mercy Summary
American Dirt is a work of fiction by Jeanine Cummins published in 2020 by MacMillan Press. This guide refers to the first US edition. The controversial, cross-genre novel combines elements of a commercial thriller, literary fiction, suspense, and romance. The title refers to the land comprising the geopolitical entity that is the United States of America, and to the contempt undocumented migrants face both before and after crossing the US-Mexico border. While many critics initially... Read American Dirt Summary
Zitkála-Šá’s 1921 book American Indian Stories gathers autobiographical chapters, historical fiction stories, and essays focused on the experiences of the Dakota Sioux and interactions between American Indians and White citizens of the United States. Zitkála-Šá’s works convey a strong sense of independence, pride in Sioux culture, and indignation at injustices committed against American Indians. This study guide references the 2019 Modern Library (Penguin Random House) edition of American Indian Stories.SummaryThe collection begins with an autobiographical... Read American Indian Stories Summary
Published in 2016, America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie is the fictionalized biography of Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, known to her family as Patsy. Based on true events, the novel tells the story of Patsy and her relationship with her father, one of America’s Founding Fathers and earliest presidents.In 1826, shortly after Jefferson’s death, Patsy begins the arduous task of sorting through her father’s papers—burning some and editing others... Read America's First Daughter Summary
Published in 1925, Theodore Dreiser’s realist novel An American Tragedy is one of the author’s most critically acclaimed works. Set in the 1920s in Kansas City, Chicago, and small-town New York state, the historical fiction novel is the story of how Clyde Griffiths, the son of poor, itinerant preachers, kills Roberta Alden during a boat trip in the Adirondack Mountains.This guide is based on the Kindle edition published by Rosetta Books.Content Warning: This novel contains... Read An American Tragedy Summary
The third novel by Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed, is a work of historical fiction that examines the factors that lead to and reverberate from one action: a poor family sells their youngest daughter to a wealthy couple in Kabul. Set in Afghanistan, the novel spans over fifty 50 years and four generations. Hosseini includes several narrative voices, rather than just the story’s main family. The multiple narrators provide several different angles into the... Read And the Mountains Echoed Summary
An Echo in the Bone (2009) is the seventh novel in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Combining elements of the historical fiction, adventure, fantasy, magical realism, and romance genres, the series follows the adventures of Claire Randall, a WWII battle nurse who accidentally time travels to 18th-century Scotland and falls in love with Jamie Fraser, a Highland warrior. Over the course of 10 planned novels, Gabaldon follows Claire, Jamie, and their family as they... Read An Echo in the Bone Summary
Written by Wallace Stegner and released in 1971, Angle of Repose is a historical fiction novel about Lyman Ward, a wheelchair-bound historian who decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents, particularly his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward. He hopes that their experiences will help him deal with his present situation. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972 and is based on the letters of Mary Hallock Foote, which were later published as A... Read Angle of Repose Summary
Published in 2007, Animal’s People by Indra Sinha was the 2008 winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. Based in the fictional town of Khaufpur, which means “village of terror,” it centers around the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster and its aftereffects on the survivors. Told from the point of view of a 19-year-old Khaufpuri boy who was disfigured “that night,” the novel focuses on the West’s dehumanization... Read Animal's People Summary
Anna in the Tropics, a two-act play by Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. Set against the evocative backdrop of a cigar factory in Florida during the Prohibition Era, the poetic language and emotional depth of the play bring to life a dramatic episode in the lives of a Cuban family living and working in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, in 1929. At this time in history, tensions between... Read Anna In The Tropics Summary
Another Brooklyn is a 2016 novel by Jacqueline Woodson. After the narrator, August, returns home to care for her dying father, she runs into her former friend Sylvia. This encounter leads her to reflect on her childhood in Brooklyn in the 1970s and the way she coped with her mother’s death. The novel unfolds in fragments: each chapter moves between August’s girlhood memories and adult life as an ivy-league educated anthropologist who studies cultural rituals... Read Another Brooklyn Summary
E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, published in 1924, tells a story of the power of colonialism, the tension between spirituality and morality, and the inescapability of evil. Forster wrote this historical fiction novel after traveling to India in 1912 and volunteering in Egypt during World War I. A film adaptation of the novel directed by David Lean premiered in 1984 and received multiple Academy Award nominations. This summary uses the 75th Anniversary edition... Read A Passage to India Summary
Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War is a historical account of the secession movement in the antebellum Southern US written by Charles B. Dew. Dew is a distinguished professor of history at Williams College specializing in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras. Apostles of Disunion was published in 2001 by the University of Virginia Press and won the 2001 Fletcher Pratt Prize from the Civil War Round Table... Read Apostles of Disunion Summary
When Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun premiered in 1959, it was the first play by a Black woman to open on Broadway, as well as the first play with a Black director. The title comes from Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem,” which asks, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” Content Warning: The play and this guide discuss themes of racism and slavery.The play tells the... Read A Raisin in the Sun Summary
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard was first performed on April 13, 1993, at the Royal National Theatre in London. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it one of the best science-related works ever written.The play, which contains elements of historical fiction, has dual plot lines—one historical and one modern—that share the same physical setting. In the 19th century, the play follows the young Thomasina, a mathematical genius far ahead of her time, and... Read Arcadia Summary
A River Runs through It is a semi-autobiographical novella by the American author Norman Maclean. The novella was published in 1976, and A River Runs through It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1977. The novella contains the coming-of-age story of the author and his brother, Paul. Sons of a Scottish Presbyterian minister and his wife, the two boys grew up in a small town in western Montana at the turn of the last... Read A River Runs Through It Summary
A Room with a View is a 1908 historical fiction/romance novel by British author E. M. Forster. The novel is split between Italy and England, telling the story of Lucy Honeychurch, a young and spirited middle-class Englishwoman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery during a trip to Italy. During her travels, Lucy falls in love with the free-spirited and unconventional George Emerson, a fellow tourist, but is later forced to choose between her heart's... Read A Room with a View Summary
Chinua Achebe’s 1964 novel Arrow of God portrays an Ibo leader as he confronts the British administrators and missionaries in his town. The text, Achebe’s third novel, is part of a series of books called The African Trilogy. Arrow of God won the first ever Jock Campbell/New Statesman prize for African Literature.The novel focuses on Ezeulu, who is the High Priest of Ulu. Ulu is the most important deity in the town of Umuaro, and... Read Arrow of God Summary
A Spool of Blue Thread was published in 2015 and is the twentieth novel by American author Anne Tyler. The novel falls under the subgenre of Women’s Fiction. A Spool of Blue Thread received mixed reviews by critics upon publication but fared far better with the general public. After its commercial success, it was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, as well as the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Other works by Tyler include... Read A Spool of Blue Thread Summary
Irish novelist and screenwriter Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. His work is renowned both for its treatment of Irish working-class life and its deployment of Dublin dialect. His 1993 masterpiece, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, won the Booker Prize.A Star Called Henry (1999) is the first in The Last Round Up trilogy, which follows the life of Henry, a working-class Dublin boy born at the turn of the 20th century. Henry’s life... Read A Star Called Henry Summary