Your favourite book - historical fiction, not UK/US based?

The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley

If you haven’t already read it, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.

This book completely blew me away. Set in France during WWII it follows the resilience of two sisters. It’s completely empowering and emotional, I recommend it to everyone.

The Land Beyond The Sea by Sharon Penman is about Jerusalem and The Crusades.

Oh you have to read Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series in order. Don’t just jump in anywhere.

Start with Master and Commander and be patient when it comes to technical descriptions. They are far less indigestible in the later books and it is still a wonderful story.

I enjoyed the Hornblower novels very much, but Hornblower is so impossibly perfect and would never tell anyone that they have made their cake and now must lie in it.

Natalie Haynes - A thousand ships about the women of troy was fantastic.

I'm a huge fan of Andre Brink South African novelist who wrote both historical and contemporary fiction, but the historical fiction is mainly 19th century so may be too recent for you. Dan Sleigh (also SA) wrote an amazing book called Islands which is 17th century.

Elif Shafak's The Architect's Apprentice which is middle ages/early modern Ottoman empire is very good.

Pat Barker Women of Troy and Silence of the Girls. Both were brilliant.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Korea and Japan from 1911. I read it for book club and really enjoyed it. I then lent my copy to my mum who enjoyed it so much she bought her own.

Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series, I've only read the first two but they're about cathedral building and the Black Death.

Oh sorry, just seen you said not UK

I recently read Lady Tan's Circle of Women, which is based on an actual 15th century female doctor in China. Fascinating. Though I should perhaps warn you that there are fairly graphic descriptions related to foot binding.

Circe - Madeleine Miller (Ancient Greece)
The Wolf Den - Elodie Harper (Pompeii)
The Marriage Portrait - Maggie O Farrell- (Italy)
How we disappeared - Jing Jing Lee (Singapore)

Loved all these - Well I'm 3/4 of the way through the Marriage Portrait but I love it so far! And the rest were superb

Great thread, though it’s making me realise how little I’ve read in this category, especially in terms of anything written by non-anglophone writers. One I loved years ago and haven’t seen mentioned yet is I, Claudius.

Romola by George Eliot set in 15th century Florence during the time of Savonerola.

Kristin Lavrandatter by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tiina Nunnally (do not read the Archer and Scott translation which is written in fake 'ye olde worlde' language). Set in Norway in the 14th century it's a trilogy that follows the life of the fictional Kristin Lavrandatter.

I'm currently reading The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse, which is set in 16th Century France and is based around the expulsion of the Hugenots. I'm enjoying it so far, and it is currently free on Amazon Prime reading, so that's a bonus!

I recently read Essex Dogs by Dan Snow which I really enjoyed (was also free on Prime reading, but not sure if it still is), set in France again at the beginning of the Hundred Years war.

I think both are the beginning of a series too, which is always good if you've enjoyed something!

@Passerillage my reading likes seem very similar to yours as I've loved all of those.

Have you read The Heroines by Laura Shepperson? It's just been promoted by Women's Prize for fiction and looks like my kind of thing.

Norah Lofts ‘The Lute Player’ is riveting ( and with several , all very different central female characters : Eleanor of Aquitaine, Berengaria, and the fictional but enchanting Anna Apicata).
Gillian Bradshaw has several set in Byzantium, esp ‘Imperial Purple’ and ‘The Bearkeepers’Daughter’.

Dorothy Dunnett - her Niccolo series has a Belgian/French character as lead, and the Lymond series although the lead is Scottish, spends very little time in the UK. Both series travel far and wide. Niccolo is an 8 book run, and Lymond 6. Niccolo set in 1470s or thereabouts and Lymond possibly a hundred or so years later?

The Sea Road, by Margaret Elphinstone. The Viking exploration of Greenland and discovery of America

A haunting, compelling historical novel, The Sea Road is a daring re-telling of the 11th-century Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. Gudrid lives at the remote edge of the known world, in a starkly beautiful landscape where the sea is the only connection to the shores beyond. It is a world where the old Norse gods are still invoked, even as Christianity gains favour, where the spirits of the dead roam the vast northern ice-fields, tormenting the living, and Viking explorers plunder foreign shores.

Taking the accidental discovery of North America as its focal point, Gudrid's narrative describes a multi-layered voyage into the unknown, all recounted with astonishing immediacy and rich atmospheric detail.

The Bride, by Margaret Irwin set in Scotland and Holland during the English Civil war, or Royal Flush, the story of Charles II's sister and set at the court of Louis XIV. Irwin's a very neglected writer

Try Circe, then Ariadne and Medusa (different writers, all wonderful - Circe in particular is outstanding). The Women of Troy, the Song of Achilles. Hell, just go straight to the source and read The Odyssey! :)

Have you tried Dorothy Dunnett?

I started A Place of Greater Safety today. A good bit later than your preferred period, but it has one virtue in that it will occupy you for a good while (at least I anticipate that it will keep me quiet for a few weeks!).

I also loved The Marriage Portrait mentioned above. (And Maturin/Aubrey too.)

Robert Harris - The Cicero trilogy (roman era, based on Cicero's life, told from his slave's perspective)

Robert Harris does a good range of fiction based around different historical periods, in different locations.

Also Horrible History!

Mary Renault and Patrick O'Brien seconded very heartily.

And The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is excellent if you're not turned off by David Mitchell's occult element invading a historical novel.

Another one that is absolutely not my thing but that I enjoyed, to my surprise, is Connie Willis's Domesday Book -- set in a 'slightly future' Oxford where there are no mobile phones but time travel is practiced by historians for research purposes, and a student gets stranded at the time of the Black Death by a pandemic in her present. The author has some very weird ideas about a roughly-contemporary Oxford (and it's never entirely clear to me why time travel is only practiced by historians), but it's gripping and would work for your time period preferences.

This is an absolutely superb book, I think it's the best historical novel I've ever read.

There is a sequel too, called The Cornerstone.