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recommend me good historical novels

105 replies

parietal · 06/03/2024 22:25

I love historical novels - the feeling of being in a different place and time. So why are 50% of the modern ones full of anachronisms, especially in people's attitudes and interpretations. I'm currently reading one with an 11 year old black boy in 18th century London who is worrying about structural racism rather than just trying to survive. Yes, obviously there is lots of racism around in that era, but I don't believe that a kid would be theorizing about it, he'd just be living it. And it would be so much more powerful if the author just showed his experience. Similarly, I hate it when novels make their characters into modern feminists in a way that is completely out of place.

what authors / novels can you recommend that depict strong interesting characters that will not jar in this way?

OP posts:
Blackcats7 · 07/03/2024 10:42

Anything by
Susan Howatch
RF Delderfield
EM Delafield
Cynthia Harrod Eagles ( not meaning her mysteries, the sagas)

JaninaDuszejko · 07/03/2024 10:38

Hilary Mantel, Dorothy Dunnett, Sigrid Undset, Tolstoy (War and Peace), George Elliot (Romola).

beguilingeyes · 07/03/2024 10:23

Sharon Penman. All of it.

kesstrel · 07/03/2024 10:03

Andrew Taylor: The American Boy, Bleeding Heaert Yard, and others.
Patrick O'Brien
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
Voyage of the Narwhal, Andrea Barrett
Thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet
As Meat Loves Salt
Crooked Heart -Lissa Evans
Some Luck, -Jane Smiley
Sarah Waters
Hannah Kent
Andrew Miller -Pure; Now we shall be entirely free; I think there are others I've not read
The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January mysteries

I

Polecat07 · 07/03/2024 08:42

Well I loved 'Song of Achilles', but I doubt it will fulfill your brief on historical accuracy.

I'm not sure there's much fiction that will - surely the nature of fiction requires a little suspended disbelief, an allowance for artistic licence. My husband enjoys history but is similarly bothered by the 'unrealistic', so he reads nonfiction exclusively.