Historical Fiction

With its music and fashion and the ever-present threat of nuclear war, the 1980s are ripe for fiction, argues Eleanor Anstruther, author of Fallout, a novel about the decades-long protest against cruise missiles at Greenham Common. She recommends five of her favourites—including two Booker Prize winners—from the excesses of Thatcherite London to a coming of age on the slagheaps of Glasgow.

When they're done well, historical novels are a really exciting way to learn about history, because they combine the emotional involvement of fiction with the narrative of events that took place and details of how life was lived in the past. For that reason, we're always excited when a historian chooses a work of historical fiction as one of their expert recommendations.  

The figure of the witch recurs across cultures and time periods, and remains a source of fascination even today. Here, Margaret Meyer—author of The Witching Tide, an acclaimed historical novel inspired by a notorious English witch hunt—recommends five brilliant fiction books about witches, and explains how the witch serves as a symbol of female power in a patriarchal society.

Writers approach historical fiction from many different angles, explains the novelist Paul Carlucci—whose new, evocative novel is set in colonial-era Canada. Here, he recommends five of his favourite literary historical novels that manipulate form, character and setting in interesting ways while simultaneously summoning the atmosphere of the past.

If you have recently discovered the work of Kristin Hannah following her recent hit The Women, a story of female nurses in the Vietnam War, then you may be excited to learn that she has an extensive back-catalogue of more than twenty books to catch up on. Here they are, in order.

English-speaking readers are not always so familiar with the dramatic historical events of Central and South America, says Sofia Robleda—author of a new novel set during the Aztec empire, The Other Moctezuma Girls. But if you enjoy historical fiction with heart and soul, you are bound to love these five vibrant, "hugely relevant" novels set in Latin America.

The dramatic events and scope of World War 2 make it one of the most popular settings for historical fiction. The range of books varies widely, from real-life stories written up as novels, to entirely fictional accounts which use one or more of the many horrific events of World War II as backdrop.

To live and to write in South Africa is to engage with history, explains Karen Jennings, the acclaimed novelist and co-creator of the Island Prize for South African writers. Here, she recommends five historical fiction books set in South Africa for those who would like to improve their understanding of the country's complex past.

Ever since the ruins of an ancient civilization started to be discovered around Italy, ancient Rome has captured the imagination and inspired writers. Here we've collected together all the novels about ancient Rome and its empire that have been recommended on Five Books, from an 18th-century bestseller to the last novel by one of the great fantasy authors of our time.

The complex history of Asia makes for a broad range of historical fiction. Here, we've collected the historical novels set in Asia that have been recommended in Five Books interviews, including Jing-Jing Lee's How We Disappeared—a historical novel about the Japanese occupation of Singapore—and Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace, which follows the life of the last Burmese king and his family.