Recommendations from our site
“It’s known first and foremost as a feminist classic. But it is a historical novel because its plot spans centuries. It’s a sort of pseudo-biography of a young Elizabethan era nobleman who is mysteriously immortal, and also mysteriously transforms into a woman partway through the book. They revel in this new form, yet also push up against the kind of gendered expectations of the time.” Read more...
Five of the Best Feminist Historical Novels
Flora Carr, Novelist
“This is Woolf’s mysterious and magical insight into the cyclical, sexual nature of time. Her hero/heroine appears and reappears in new bodies in new ages. It’s her most beautiful writing too, in my opinion…It was Virginia’s only completely light-hearted, love-inspired, spontaneous story. She wrote it in one weekend, or so it’s said, while a guest at Vita’s west country place. Books inspired by love and written at once are rare for novelists. Orlando may even be unique. Poets, of course, write a lot of occasional poems, but they are short. Orlando is mysterious, tender and profound all at once, because the love she celebrated was doomed by both her and Vita’s circumstances. But in the process of trying to preserve that feeling, she invented (or discovered) a form of time travel.” Read more...
The best books on Fantastical Tales
Andrei Codrescu, Novelist
