Historical Fiction?

[hawthorns]

I'm a lover of history but am frustrated at how easy it is to forget it with textbook style formats. For some reason all the history I've ever read that has come through historical fiction has tended to "stick." I know the obvious ones like Les Mis, Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers, Hunchback Notre Dame, Tale of Two Cities. Just wondering what your favorites are?

Thanks :smile5:

[mtpspur]

Hands down Rafael Sabatini most famous for Captain Blood and Scaramouche. If oyu just want a taste of him try his volumes Historical Nights Entertainments (3 of them). I read him mostly for his adventures stories and brilliant conversations between characters. Warning Scaramouche is probably his best written novel but it can be a bit dense. Blodd (and his two follow-up books Captain Blod Retunes and Fortunes of Captain Blood for more fun. The last two tell tales that occur within the main novel.

[hawthorns]

Hands down Rafael Sabatini most famous for Captain Blood and Scaramouche. If oyu just want a taste of him try his volumes Historical Nights Entertainments (3 of them). I read him mostly for his adventures stories and brilliant conversations between characters. Warning Scaramouche is probably his best written novel but it can be a bit dense. Blodd (and his two follow-up books Captain Blod Retunes and Fortunes of Captain Blood for more fun. The last two tell tales that occur within the main novel.

Those look right up my alley. Some really good reviews too.

Thanks!

[Raven Falcon.]

Those look right up my alley. Some really good reviews too.

Thanks!
The title of my reply is the obstacle that potential readers must overcome to enjoy historical novels.

Do not expect lyrical prose in historical fiction.

[Edward74]

Three Musketeers is my favorite....http://www.infoocean.info/avatar2.jpg

[hallaig]

The title of my reply is the obstacle that potential readers must overcome to enjoy historical novels.

Do not expect lyrical prose in historical fiction.

You've obviously no read Robert Louis Stevenson, or Walter Scott. For modern Scottish Historical fiction Nigel Tranter. Love him.

And for the ancient world Rosemary Sutcliffe, Mary Renault. Och so much

[PoeticPassions]

Reading this thread, I have realized that I have not read many historical novels (or as many as I would have thought). But here are some favorites of the ones I have read: The Grapes of Wrath, All Quiet on the Western Front, Les Miserables, Memoirs of Hadrian

[Paulclem]

I like historical novels. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall about the court of Henry V!!!is good, as is CJ Sansom for his historical crime thriller in the same period. What I like are the historical details you pick up as you go through.

I particularly liked Robert Harris' Pompeii, which is also a murder mystery, and his two about the Roman orator Cicero, (The second is Lustrum, the title of the first escapes me at the moment). Robert Graves' I Claudius and Claudius The God are excellent.

[stlukesguild]

Check out Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings set in ancient Egypt. I would also look at Gore Vidal's Lincoln, Burr, and Julian. I also quite enjoyed Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.

[hawthorns]

Thanks everyone! Lots of good stuff there.

[PeterL]

Kenneth Roberts: Arundel, Rabble in Arms, Northwest Passage, The Lively Lady, Oliver Wiswall, Captain Caution, ad others. Also some novels by Poul Anderson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Roberts_%28author%29

als Thomas Costain, who wrote English history with all of the little items left in, or some of them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Costain

[WyattGwyon]

Russian-Soviet Literature is full of military history. Off the top of my head:

Tolstoy's War and Peace for Napoleonic invasion.

Solzhenitsyn's Red Wheel 1: August 1914 is an exhaustive treatment of a disastrous early campaign of WWI.

Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate includes a harrowing account of the siege of Stalingrad.

Vasily Aksyonov's Generations of Winter is firmly grounded in the history of the Stalin era.

Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry Stories, which named names, were realistic enough to earn him a bullet in the back of the head.

All of these are worth ready on aesthetic grounds alone, of course. Tolstoy's analysis of Napoleon's Russian campaign was influential enough to have spawned a large secondary literature in military theory and historiography.

[RicMisc]

I am personally very interested in history of the Far East, specifically China and Japan. In particular anything before the People's Republic emerged. I know Confucius is probably the greatest Chinese author but are there any other authors/books worth a read?

[Prince Smiles]

Historical Fiction really does help one get one’s history in order, I totally agree with you there.

Salmon Rushdie once said in an interview that when people think about Magic Realism, they tend to just concentrate on the Magic and forget about the Realism part, thus dismissing the work as fantasy.

The same can be said about Historical Fiction to a certain extent. People think about the Historical part and are either, put off, or interested in the book.

A Tale of Two Cities could be one such case. If you were to mention that novel to someone, a very probable first comment elicited would be, oh, the French Revolution novel. And not, oh the tale of resurrection and self-sacrifice. That poor, poor Sydney Carton. :cryin:

Someone might say that they are not interested in the French Revolution, or that they have studied it enough already without pausing for a moment to acknowledge the fact that there is a fictional story interwoven in the book.
Folks need to remember the ‘fictional factor’ in Historical Fiction.

The joy of Historical Fiction for me is the fictional character meeting the historical character; the fictional character taking a prominent part in real historic events, and the way the author deals with historic perspective, for example, Barnaby Rudge meeting Lord George Gordon and then Barney leading the No Popery Riots in London in 1780.

Dickens’ Tale of Two does attract a lot of attention when the question of historical fiction arises and rightly so, it is masterly written.

Another book about the French Revolution and a brilliant piece of Historic Fiction is Victor Hugo’s last novel, ‘Ninety-Three’. This is one of my favorites.
Hugo’s descriptive writing of the Assembly Hall in the book is unparalleled.

Two favorites: ‘Ninety-Three’ ‘Barnaby Rudge’

[mtpspur]

Yes Kenneth Roberts is absolutely readable. If I amy I feel bad I did not mention C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series best read in chronlogical order as opposed to published order. Follows the trials and tributions of a young British naval officer during the napoleonic wars. Forester writes so well the naval battles are easy to follow. Insightful look into the life on the high seas.

[PeterL]

I ewill agree about Hornblower, but he should have gone up against Captain Marvin of the Lively Lady. Both of them used pendulums.

[Whifflingpin]

Some of the books already mentioned would be in my top 20, but I'd add Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon and Voss by Patrick White. (I guess that there is probably a dissertation to be written comparing and contrasting those two.)

Has Golding been mentioned?

or Alfred Duggan?

[Gregory Samsa]

I, Claudius by Robert Graves, Imperium by Robert Harris and Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar are all great.