Every year, we interview the judges of the Walter Scott Prize to hear about the latest historical novels we should be reading, but with so much new historical fiction being published every week, we like to keep a look out for other books that look interesting. We also keep track of new books by authors who have done an interview with us or whose books have been frequently recommended on Five Books. If you're interested in a particular era, we have a special section devoted to the very popular genre of World War II historical fiction. We also have an interview on the best medieval historical fiction, recommended by Professor Marion Turner, a medieval literature expert at the University of Oxford.
I Am Not Your Eve
by Devika Ponnambalam
Shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction
Devika Ponnambalam's historical novel presents the story of Teha'amana, the child-bride and muse of the French artist Paul Gauguin, and the girl who features in his most famous work, 'Manaò tupapaú' ('Spirit of the Dead Watching'). I Am Not Your Eve is written primarily from Teha'amana's perspective, but includes several other voices, creating the clash of cultures between the French colonists, Christian missionaries and the indigenous peoples of Polynesia. While presenting their 2023 historical fiction shortlist, the Walter Scott Prize judges said it was "a complex novel" that raised "uncomfortable issues of morality." It demands a lot of the reader, they added, but is "deeply rewarding."
Ancestry: A Novel
by Simon Mawer
Shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction
Mawer won the 2016 Walter Scott Prize for his novel Tightrope—the story of a female secret agent for the British during World War II. He returns to the shortlist with a new historical novel that delves into the stories from the author's own family tree. As the 2023 Walter Scott Prize judges observed: "he refuses to choose between fiction and fact," melding his archival research with imagined elements that takes us from poverty-stricken London to the Crimean War. It's an "ambitious novel" and a "memorable family odyssey that takes the reader into a fictional realm."
The Sun Walks Down
by Fiona McFarlane
Shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction
In The Sun Walks Down, a historical novel set in 1883 Australia, the disappearance of a six-year-old boy during a duststorm electrifies an outback community of farmers, artists, servants, cameleers and Aboriginal peoples, and forces a broader reckoning in this uneasy colonial society. This is a slowburn mystery of literary merit, with a complex, multi-layered plot and intense atmospheric effect. The 2023 Walter Scott Prize judges described it as a "rich and empathetic novel" which offered the reader the keys to understanding Australia, summoning its landscape—"at once beautiful and alien"—and its "burning sun" directly onto the page.
The Chosen
by Elizabeth Lowry
Shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction
In The Chosen, Elizabeth Lowry examines—by way of historical fiction, drawn from fact—the troubled marriage of Thomas Hardy and his wife Emma. After Emma's death in 1912, Hardy read her diaries recording their years together; their contents, the story they told about their dissolving partnership, disturbed him so much that he burned them. "Combining meticulous research with a poet’s imagination, Lowry gives voice to both Hardy and to his downtrodden wife," said the judges of the 2023 Walter Scott Prize. "The result is an extraordinary work, full of tenderness and unexpected humour. It’s a portrait of a marriage gone wrong and an investigation into the grammar of grief. Along the way, we consider the parasitic relationship art can have with life, and the transcendent power of love."
The Geometer Lobachevsky
by Adrian Duncan
Shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction
The Irish writer, artist and former structural engineer Adrian Duncan draws from his unusual blend of expertise in his novels—which have previously featured a Berlin construction site and a retired bridge engineer. The Geometer Lobachevsky is about a Soviet mathematician who has been working to survey peatbogs for mechanised harvesting in 1950s Ireland. But to describe it in such terms "is akin to relegating Leonardo’s Last Supper to thirteen men having dinner," protest the judges of the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. "Like the bog Lobachevsky is surveying, the unassuming surface conceals ‘a subterranean ocean on a gusty day’." It's a "quiet gem" that brings a great, fitting precision to the inner life and melancholy predicament of our protagonist, as he attempts to evade a summons to return to the USSR.
These Days
by Lucy Caldwell
Shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction
Lucy Caldwell's fifth novel is set during the Belfast Blitz, a series of four devastating major air raids on the Northern Irish city in 1941. It's "an under-told chapter in the fiction of my city," as Caldwell reflected; researching the book felt like "a strange, intense sort of solace" during the early days of the Covid crisis. The novel focuses on two sisters, Audrey and Emma, whose comfortable middle-class existence is shattered during the attacks. While announcing the shortlist for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction, the judges noted that "the juxtaposition of the horrific and mundane and the authenticity of detail makes this novel an exceptional study of the terrors and consequences of war."
“Alice Winn’s In Memoriam—a love story set during the tumult of the First World War—came roaring out of the starting gates and straight into the bestseller lists. In it, two heartsick schoolboys are forced to confront their feelings for one another amid the horror of war. In it, two heartsick schoolboys are forced to confront their feelings for one another amid the horror of war. It’s been endorsed by such literary grandees as Maggie O’Farrell and Garth Greenwell; The New York Times has also described it as both ‘devastating’ and ‘tender'” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Journalist
The World and All That It Holds
by Aleksandar Hemon
The World and All That It Holds is a new historical novel by Bosnia-born novelist Aleksandar Hemon, who we interviewed more than a decade ago on the cheery topic of 'Man's Inhumanity To Man'. This novel is set at the outbreak of World War I and ranges from Sarajevo (where the main protagonist witnesses the killing of Archduke Ferdinand and Sophie, his wife) to Shanghai.
M: Son of the Century
by Antonio Scurati
***Winner of the 2022 European Book Prize***
Antonio Scurati's novel about the rise of Fascism in Italy, told from the point of view of Benito Mussolini. There are also excerpts from newspapers and reports. The first in a trilogy, this 700+ page book includes the March on Rome as well as the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, ending in 1925.
Act of Oblivion
by Robert Harris
Shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
New historical novels by British writer Robert Harris are always worth looking out for so don't let the blitz of marketing surrounding his latest, Act of Oblivion, put you off. It's set at an interesting point in English history: the immediate aftermath of the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Through the reflections of one of the main characters, we see the events leading up to the execution of Charles I more than a decade previously, in 1649, as well as the battles of the English Civil War and Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army. Puritan America is also an important part of the setting. If you're interested in history and don't know the details of this period, it's an interesting book, not least because you can't help but reflect on what it takes to tip a country into civil war.
The Marriage Portrait: A Novel
by Maggie O'Farrell & narrated by Genevieve Gaunt
Shortlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction
“This is by Maggie O’Farrell, who wrote Hamnet, which was a great success last year. In The Marriage Portrait, she takes us to 16th-century Italy and the Medicis. It’s about a child bride, Lucrezia de’Medici who is the daughter of Cosimo de’Medici. She marries the Duke of Ferrara at the age of 15. This is a true historical event. The actress Genevieve Gaunt, who narrates the audiobook, has the perfect voice for this story. She’s got a huge range of characters she has to do. She has to be a 15-year-old bride, who has a lot of spirit, but she’s up against a huge force in the Duke of Ferrara, who has a deep baritone. Then you’ve got the courtiers, the princes and her maid. The book is beautifully written, so there are lots of descriptions of the court and the palaces and her garments. Genevieve Gaunt captures not only these portraits, which are very powerful and very diverse, but all the details. She makes you feel like you’re there—you’re seeing a table laid with all these foods, or Lucrezia’s gown. You just see it so beautifully…Interestingly, the book reviews in print have been mixed. Lots of people love it but there have been some fairly negative reviews. When I read those I thought, ‘You just didn’t have Genevieve Gaunt telling you this story!’ She just places you there as a listener in 16th-century Italy.” Read more...
Robin Whitten, Journalist
The Blunder
by Mutt-Lon
The Blunder by Mutt-Lon, the pen name of Nsegbe Daniel Alain, is a historical novel set in early 20th century Cameroon, when the country was split between French and English colonial administrations. It's based on the true story of Dr. Eugène Jamot, a French military doctor whose head still graces a monument outside the Ministry of Public Health in Yaoundé, the capital, but whose legacy is decidedly mixed. The book is a revealing, refreshing and entertaining read, written in French and translated into English by Amy Reid.
“I’m not one for technology on the whole, but Amanda Smyth’s novel, which describes the dash and bravado of the early days of drilling for oil in Trinidad, with all the intricacies of machines and derricks and oil pipes, is completely absorbing. Smyth, herself a Trinidadian, evokes the ‘creaking forests’ where the ‘frogs sang their sirens’ with absolute assurance. Her cast of risk-taking oilmen, business investors, anxious landowners and the glamorous woman at the heart of the central love story, hurtle inexorably to the thrilling climax. Fortune is more than an adventure story. It shows the turmoil that the discovery of oil inevitably causes to the settled societies that experience it.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Elizabeth Laird, Novelist
“Rose Nicholson is a terrific historical adventure story in the grand old tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott himself. We couldn’t resist its sheer gusto—the mad dashes down the murky wynds of sixteenth-century Edinburgh, the icy blasts of wind against the granite walls of St Andrews, the thrill of a reiver raid across the Border. Andrew Greig brings his characters brilliantly to life: the drooling James VI, the peacock courtier Esmé Stewart, and William Fowler, the main character himself, with all his doubts and fears, his strengths and endearing failings.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Elizabeth Laird, Novelist
News of the Dead
by James Robertson
*** Winner of the 2022 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction ***
“Behind the beguiling, interlinked narrative of three characters from different periods of history—an Iron Age hermit, a nineteenth-century literary conman, and a child thrown out into the world from war-torn Europe—is a profound appreciation of a landscape, the rocks, the rain, the streams, trees and mosses of the remote Scottish glen where these three lives are lived. In our own restless, shifting times many of us have lost any sense of rootedness to a particular place. James Robertson’s novel draws us gently back to contemplate the importance of place and nature in our lives. For many of us, an appreciation of our homes and our surroundings has been one good thing that we will take away from our months in lockdown.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Elizabeth Laird, Novelist
“The Magician is a magisterial work taking in a wide sweep of twentieth-century history while sensitively dissecting the inner life of one of the greatest writers of his day. A less author than Tóibín would have been overwhelmed by the richness of his material, spanning as it does the rise of Nazism, Mann’s need to escape from Germany with his Jewish wife and family, and his turbulent years in America. But The Magician is a novel, not a biography, and Tóibín’s focus is always on Mann himself, his homo-erotic longings, his curious detachment from his unruly children and the way in which he used his own experiences to create his novels.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Elizabeth Laird, Novelist
Katharine Parr, The Sixth Wife: A Novel
by Alison Weir
'Divorced, beheaded, died//Divorced, beheaded, survived' is the rhyme by which we remember what Henry VIII, who ruled England from 1509-1547, did to each of his six wives. He was the second ruler in the new Tudor dynasty, after the death of his father, Henry VII. Historian Alison Weir has done the world a huge service by recreating the lives of Henry VIII's wives by means of a historical novel about each of them, her Six Tudor Queens series. This is the last in the series, about Katharine Parr, the wife who survived Henry. Like all the books in the series, this is a historical novel that appeals to the historian, a reconstruction of a life rather than a lyrical flight of imagination.
“Steven Conte’s writing is direct and compelling—the chapter describing a forty-hour shift of operations on the wounded is a masterclass of relentless horror and humour. But The Tolstoy Estate is much more than just a war story…This novel is also a love story and, with most of the action taking place at Yasnaya Polyana, the former estate of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, it’s also a love-through-literature story.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
The Prophets
by Robert Jones Jr.
In The Prophets Robert Jones Jr. recreates life on a plantation in the American South, before the Civil War. It's a beautifully told love story, of love between two men, both enslaved and how others on the plantation, including fellow slaves who have found Christianity, respond.
“Kate Grenville has taken the bland letters of Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of John Macarthur, the so-called ‘father of the Australian wool industry’, and read between the lines to give us an alternative story. And what a compelling tale she’s woven, of a canny, resourceful woman, not perfect by any means, but who, through her own efforts and ingenuity, is transformed from reluctant Australian immigrant, a victim of sorts, into a vigorous and successful matriarch.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
“The Dictionary of Lost Words is the kindest book you’re ever likely to read. But don’t mistake me. Pip Williams’s kindness isn’t of the sweetly insipid variety. Rigorous, full of insights and honesty…The Dictionary of Lost Words is as carefully constructed as the Oxford English Dictionary whose creation is the novel’s setting.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
Troy
by Stephen Fry
If you loved Mythos and Heroes, the first two instalments of Stephen Fry's mythical trilogy, you'll love Troy. Fry is a talented actor and the audiobook—which he narrates himself—is particularly delightful, appealing to adults and kids alike. What was the story based on? Here, Stephen Fry explains which books were his main sources for Troy, many of them beautiful poetry with wonderful English translations.
Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell
*** Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 ***
Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, a fictionalised account of the short life of Shakespeare’s son, won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. It’s also read beautifully as an audiobook by Ell Potter.
Narrator: Ell Potter
Listening time: 12 hours and 42 minutes
“It’s a great story, and beautifully told…see how she ensures that Shakespeare’s wife and children are never overshadowed by their father. In less skilled hands, not naming Shakespeare would grate and fail. With Maggie O’Farrell, this not-naming seems effortless and natural. As we said in our judge’s quote, a bravura performance.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
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 is being published by Unbound, the crowdfunded publisher.
Jessica Duchen spoke to us about the best books on Beethoven.
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist, recommended by Elizabeth Laird
Every year, the Walter Scott Prize highlights the best new historical novels. In 2022, the shortlist comprises four fantastic works of historical fiction that immerse the reader in the past—from 16th-century Scotland to 1920s Trinidad—while confronting universal human dramas we still struggle with today. Elizabeth Laird, one of the judges, talks us through their choices this year.
