When new historical novels and historical fiction are published that we like, or by authors who have been frequently recommended on Five Books, the books will appear here. Please email us (editor@fivebooks.com) if you've come across a book that you think should appear on our new historical fiction list.
Immortal
by Jessica Duchen
Immortal, by Jessica Duchen, is a historical novel that aims to solve the mystery of Beethoven's 'immortal beloved' letter, which was found in a drawer in his apartment after he died, and has led to endless speculation about who it was intended for. Jessica Duchen is a specialist music writer, and the book, which is being published by Unbound, the crowdfunded publisher, promises to be both a good read, historically accurate and insightful about the music Beethoven wrote.
Jessica Duchen spoke to us about the best books on Beethoven.
Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke's debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was a bestseller when it came out in 2004, a fabulous book of what is probably best described as historical fantasy. 800 pages long and very hard to put down, fantasy novelist and (then) Time magazine book critic Lev Grossman said it was the book that woke him up to "the power of the new fantasy." Since then, Clarke has published a volume of short stories, but no other novel until this one, Piranesi. Named after (and presumably party inspired by) the extraordinary 18th century Italian printmaker, Giambattista Piranesi, the novel is weird and wonderful (and quite short, comparatively speaking).
“In the hands of a careless writer, A Sin of Omission might have been an impossible read, but Marguerite Poland’s restraint, whilst not sparing us, beckons us on. We trust her, and when you trust an author, you enjoy being absorbed into the world being offered, whatever the delights or otherwise of that world itself.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2020 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
“In The Redeemed we, like Leo and Lottie, move from what we might call the ‘prelapsarian’ world—the established, hierarchical world measured in horse-speed—towards the noisier, speedier world of the motor, with class barriers broken, or at least breached. Through their experiences we witness the birth of something new, and the birth isn’t an easy one. Many critics describe Tim Pears’ prose as ‘lyrical’. It is, but there’s steel in the lyricism. Pears shies away from nothing. Too wise to go technicolour, he instead deploys meticulous detail to intensify emotional heft. Reading The Redeemed is like watching a master craftsman at work.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2020 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
“Shadowplay employs both first and third person narrative, uses diary pages, private notes, newspaper cuttings and, occasionally, Ellen Terry’s voice. Yet it’s so smooth. Never a hiccup. Also, though the novel’s ostensibly about three titans of the Victorian theatre, it’s really a deep exploration of the exposed and the hidden, ‘the other man that every man contains’. Joseph O’Connor wants us to shiver, and we do.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2020 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
“James Meek has quite simply given us something technically ambitious and glorious to read. I found myself smiling and occasionally doing that strange British thing of shaking my head in admiration. It’s punchy stuff! Meek has fashioned a language both familiar and unfamiliar, in other words a language that without losing subtlety or nuance sounds ‘fourteenth century’. But readers shouldn’t be alarmed. Two pages in and you’re fluent.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2020 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
“Ambition, bravery, freshness—The Parisian, a first novel, has all three in spades. It’s a rare talent that can take on the complications and shifting identities of early 20th-century Middle Eastern politics and keep the reader charmed. But through her hero, Midhat Kamal, Isabella Hammad does that and more. It takes a remarkable eye for detail and ear for dialogue to succeed in both broad panorama and delicate miniature.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2020 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
The Mirror and the Light
by Hilary Mantel
The reviews are pouring in for the long-awaited conclusion to Hilary Mantel's highly acclaimed Thomas Cromwell trilogy (released March 2020), and it's a masterpiece. Writing for the Guardian, Alexandra Harris calls The Mirror and the Light "a novel of epic proportions, every bit as thrilling, propulsive, darkly comic and stupendously intelligent as its predecessors." Opening in the aftermath of Anne Boleyn's death, the book traces Cromwell's final years in the court of Henry VIII—his inevitable fall from grace and subsequent execution.
The Mirror and the Light is one of the most hotly anticipated new books of the decade: Mantel's legions of fans have waited eight years for this final instalment. Both previous titles—Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies—won the Booker Prize and, combined, have sold more than 1.5m copies. The books have also been adapted into an award-winning television series starring Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis.
Our History Editor has collected together the best books on Thomas Cromwell and also done a Thomas Cromwell books video.
Stalingrad
by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
Vasily Grossman's masterpiece Life and Fate is one of our most recommended books, especially popular with historians. It remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1964, but went on to attract enormous acclaim—and has been described more than once as "the War and Peace of the 20th century." Stalingrad is its precursor. Initially published in the 1950s under the Russian title 'For a Just Cause', it has now been translated for the first time into English by Elizabeth and Robert Chandler, as well as being significantly reworked to reinsert text from earlier manuscripts that were censored during the Soviet era.
Equal to Life and Fate in its size and epic scope, the publication of Stalingrad is—as Marcel Theroux has remarked —“like discovering the Bayeux tapestry has a prequel.”
“The Narrow Land is a triumph of intimacy, an immersive experience, illuminating through different perspectives and revealing through layers. The book is all-absorbing, as a picture can be all-absorbing. You witness events, some small, some larger, from varying angles and through differing lights and shades, and all the way through, though the technique is invisible, the effect is intense.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2020 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2020 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist, recommended by Katharine Grant
Historical fiction is experiencing something of a golden age at present: there’s never been a better time to immerse oneself in the past. The acclaimed novelist Katharine Grant—chair of the judges for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction—talks us through their 2020 shortlist.
