I can't deny that I sometimes have a bit of a complicated relationship with historical fiction. While a lot of the books can be engaging, I lose a bit of interest in them if/when I spot factual errors and historical inaccuracies (the downfall of being a history buff, I guess). Nontheless, I've read quite a few historical novels over the years, and because of that, I wanted to write a list of books I'd recommend.
Just as a warning though, while I spot factual errors and such from time to time, I don't catch them all, so there might be some in the books I have in this list.
Here's ten historical novels that I think are worth reading.
A Pair of Silver Wings by James Holland
Description from Goodreads
In 1995, Britain is celebrating the anniversary of the end of the war and Edward Enderby finds himself forced to confront the tragedy he suffered during those years, in this story of a man’s quest to heal the scars of the past.
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Description from Goodreads
Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution.
Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremony that defeats the most virulent of afflictions -- despair.
The Burning Blue by James Holland
Description from Goodreads
Joss Lambert has always been a loner, constrained by a secret from his past, until he finds friendship and solace firstly with Guy Liddell, a friend from school, and then with Guy's family, who welcome him into their farmhouse home. Joss increasingly comes to depend upon the Liddells and treats Alvesdon Farm as the one place where he feels not only appreciated but also truly happy. The idyll cannot last. With war looming, Joss is forced to confront the past. He escapes through flying, becoming a fighter pilot in the RAF. But with the onset of war, even the Liddells's world is crumbling. As Joss is fighting for his life in the Battle of Britain, so he begins to fall madly in love with Stella - Guy's twin - but with tragic consequences. Leaving England and the Liddells far behind, he continues to fly amid the sand and heat of North Africa, until his hopes and dreams are seemingly shattered for good.
Katherine by Anchee Min
Description from Goodreads
This novel, described by the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review as "nothing short of miraculous," is the story of Zebra Wong, a Chinese girl whose pragmatic mind conflicts with her passionate heart; Lion Head, her classmate, whose penchant for romantic intrigue belies his political ambitions, and Katherine, the seductive American with the red lipstick and the wild laugh who teaches them English and other foreign individualism, sensuality, the Beatles. In Katherine's classroom, repression and rebellion meet head-on-and the consequences are both tragic and liberating.
At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop
Description from Goodreads
Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land.
Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?
Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.
Land of Snow & Ashes by Petra Rautiainen
Description from Goodreads
Finnish Lapland, 1944: a young Finnish soldier is called to work as an interpreter at a Nazi prison camp. Surrounded by cruelty and death, he struggles to hold on to his humanity. When peace comes, the crimes are buried beneath the snow and ice.
A few years later, journalist Inkeri is assigned to investigate the rapid development of remote Western Lapland. Her real motivation is more personal: she is following a lead on her husband, who disappeared during the war.
But the villagers don’t want to dwell on the past, and Inkeri’s questions provoke hostility and suspicious silences. As she learns more about her mysterious tenant, Olavi, and tries to befriend a young Sámi girl, she begins to uncover traces of disturbing facts that were never supposed to come to light.
From this starkly beautiful polar landscape emerges a story of silenced histories and ongoing oppression, of human brutality and survival.
The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao
Description from Goodreads
An epic tale of love, loyalty, and war from the acclaimed author of Monkey Bridge
Half a century after it began, the Vietnam War still has a hold on our national psyche. Lan Cao’s now-classic debut, Monkey Bridge, won her wide renown for “connecting... the opposite realities of Vietnam and America” (Isabel Allende). In her triumphant new novel, Cao transports readers back to the war, illuminating events central to twentieth-century history through the lives of one Vietnamese American family.
Minh is a former South Vietnamese commander of the airborne brigade who left his homeland with his daughter, Mai. During the war, their lives became entwined with those of two Americans: James, a soldier, and Cliff, a military adviser. Forty years later, Minh and his daughter Mai live in a close-knit Vietnamese immigrant community in suburban Virginia. As Mai discovers a series of devastating truths about what really happened to her family during those years, Minh reflects upon his life and the story of love and betrayal that has remained locked in his heart since the fall of Saigon.
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Description from Goodreads
Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.
Train Dreams tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.
The Architect's Apprentice by Elif Shafak
Description from Goodreads
From the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul, a colorful, magical tale set during the height of the Ottoman Empire.
In her latest novel, Elif Shafak spins an epic tale spanning nearly a century in the life of the Ottoman Empire. In 1540, twelve-year-old Jahan arrives in Istanbul. As an animal tamer in the sultan’s menagerie, he looks after the exceptionally smart elephant Chota and befriends (and falls for) the sultan’s beautiful daughter, Princess Mihrimah. A palace education leads Jahan to Mimar Sinan, the empire’s chief architect, who takes Jahan under his wing as they construct (with Chota’s help) some of the most magnificent buildings in history. Yet even as they build Sinan’s triumphant masterpieces—the incredible Suleymaniye and Selimiye mosques—dangerous undercurrents begin to emerge, with jealousy erupting among Sinan’s four apprentices.
A memorable story of artistic freedom, creativity, and the clash between science and fundamentalism, Shafak’s intricate novel brims with vibrant characters, intriguing adventure, and the lavish backdrop of the Ottoman court, where love and loyalty are no match for raw power.
When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe
Description from Goodreads
In the waning days of World War II, as the Japanese and U.S. forces battle to possess the Philippine Islands, the Karangalan family hides with their neighbors in a cramped cellar, where they glean hope from the family stories and folktales they tell each other. These stories of love, survival, and family blend the supernatural with the rich, little known history of the Philippines, the centuries of Spanish colonization, the power of the Catholic church, and the colorful worlds of the Spanish, Mestizo, and Filipino cultures.
As the villagers tell their stories in the darkened cellar below, Holthe masterfully weaves in the stories of three brave Filipinos--a teenage brother and sister and a guerilla fighter--as they become caught in the battle against the vicious Japanese forces above ground.
Inspired by her father's firsthand accounts of this period, Tess Uriza Holthe brings to magical and terrifying life a story of the hope and courage needed to survive in wartime.
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