The novels in this study guide collection examine different historical eras and reveal how the facts and beliefs of the past still speak to our contemporary lives.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is the 2013 debut novel by American author Anthony Marra. The story, told from an omniscient point of view, begins one morning in 2004 in the small Chechen village of Eldár. The night before, a villager named Dokka was captured and taken by Federalist soldiers, and his house was burned to the ground. Akhmed, Dokka’s good friend who lives across the street, finds Dokka’s eight-year-old daughter Havaa hiding in the woods... Read A Constellation of Vital Phenomena Summary
Published in 2016, A Gentleman in Moscow, by American author Amor Towles, is the story of Count Alexander Rostov, a Russian nobleman who, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, is sentenced to lifelong imprisonment in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel. The Count must adjust not only to his new circumstances in a small room in the hotel’s belfry but also to the knowledge that his way of life is disappearing under the Bolshevik regime. As the years... Read A Gentleman in Moscow Summary
Winner of the Asian-American Literary Award, Korean-American Chang-Rae Lee’s A Gesture Life was published in 1999. Lee found inspiration for his historical fiction in the deeply disturbing news about Korean sex slaves used by Japanese soldiers during World War II. Narrated by a young Korean-turned-Japanese medic charged with overseeing comfort women in a camp in Burma, the novel provides a nuanced look at the psychological implications of assimilation and the pressure to conform. As the... Read A Gesture Life Summary
A God in Ruins is a historical fiction novel by Kate Atkinson. Published in 2015, it is known as a companion piece to Atkinson’s prior novel, Life After Life, and contains many of the same characters. Set against the backdrop of World War II, A God in Ruins examines themes of sacrifice, secrets, family, and the way that war transforms people. Plot SummaryThe events of the novel unfold between 1925 and 2012, and each chapter takes... Read A God in Ruins Summary
Published in 1967 by Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (who also published under the name James Ngugi), A Grain of Wheat takes place in Kenya on the brink of its Uhuru (independence from British colonial rule) in December 1963. The novel considers the effects of British rule on several residents of the fictional village of Thabai, many of whom suffered enormously after the real life rebellion by the Mau Mau, or the Kenya Land and... Read A Grain of Wheat Summary
A Hero of Our Time is a classic work of Russian literature written by Mikhail Lermontov and published in 1840. It exemplifies the “superfluous man” trope common in later Russian literature, in which a person of great talent and genius is unable to express these talents healthily due to personal and societal circumstances of some kind. The novel was highly influential for its critique of tsarist Russian society and for its iconic antihero, who came... Read A Hero Of Our Time Summary
A House for Mr. Biswas is a 1961 novel by V. S. Naipaul. The story takes a postcolonial perspective of the life of a Hindu Indian man in British-owned and occupied Trinidad. Now regarded as one of Naipaul's most significant novels, A House for Mr. Biswas has won numerous awards and has been adapted as a musical, a radio drama, and a television show. This guide is written using an eBook version of the 2001... Read A House for Mr. Biswas Summary
Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year was first published in 1722. The novel is written in the first-person and chronicles the spread of the bubonic plague in London in 1665. While the first-person narration and abundant historical detail result in a text that feels like—and masquerades as—nonfiction, Defoe was only 5 years old at the time of the events, while the narrator is an adult man living on his own in London. Despite... Read A Journal Of The Plague Year Summary
In 1968, the wealthy 85-year-old real estate developer Solomon “Sol” MacIvey arrives at his cabin in Punta Rassa, Florida, where he plans to live out his final days. As Sol reflects on his family’s history, the narrative moves to 1863, to the central Florida homestead of Tobias MacIvey, Sol’s grandfather. With his wife, Emma, and their six-year-old son, Zech, Tobias struggles to raise crops in the Florida wilderness, barely overcoming starvation, bear attacks, and bushwhacking... Read A Land Remembered Summary
Is Grace Marks a murderess or an innocent pawn? Is she an evil fiend or mentally ill? Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996) retells the story of Canada’s notorious nineteenth-century convicted murderess Grace Marks. Grounded in the historical record where available, Atwood’s novel probes issues of gender and class roles, identity, truth, and the nature of memory. Thomas Kinnear, a wealthy landowner, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress, are murdered in July 1843. Grace, who... Read Alias Grace Summary
All the Light We Cannot See is a historical novel by Anthony Doerr, published by Scribner in 2014. The novel alternates between the lives of its two central characters—Marie-Laure Leblanc, a girl who grows up in Paris and loses her eyesight to cataracts at age six; and Werner Pfennig, a boy from a mining town in Germany who joins the Nazi military to escape working in the mines. As the novel opens, Marie-Laure and Werner... Read All the Light We Cannot See Summary
“The Lost Lady” was published by American author Willa Cather in 1923. Set at the end of the 19th century, this western novel chronicles Marian Forrester’s life through the eyes of Niel Herbert, a young boy from the railroad town of Sweet Water. The Forresters’ decline in financial and social position mirrors the decline of the pioneer era; the contrast between this idealized era and the exploitative capitalist one comprises the novel’s main theme. The... Read A Lost Lady Summary
Published in 2008, A Mercy is Toni Morrison’s ninth novel. Morrison, both a prolific scholar and author, centers the question of slavery and a pre-racial America in this fictional novel. A Mercy was chosen as one of the best books in the year of its release by the New York Times. Plot SummaryA Mercy endeavors to explore the experiences of slaves in early America. The narrative frequently changes focus between different characters who live or... Read A Mercy Summary
Zitkála-Šá’s 1921 book American Indian Stories gathers autobiographical chapters, fictional stories, and essays focused on the experiences of the Dakota Sioux and interactions between American Indians and White citizens of the United States. Zitkála-Šá’s works convey a strong sense of independence, pride in Sioux culture, and indignation at injustices committed against American Indians. This study guide references the 2019 Modern Library (Penguin Random House) edition of American Indian Stories.SummaryThe collection begins with an autobiographical piece... Read American Indian Stories Summary
Published in 1925, Theodore Dreiser’s realist novel An American Tragedy is one of the author’s most critically acclaimed works. Set in the 1920s in Kansas City, Chicago, and small-town New York state, the novel is the story of how Clyde Griffiths, the son of poor, itinerant preachers, kills Roberta Alden during a boat trip in the Adirondack Mountains.This guide is based on the Kindle edition published by Rosetta Books.Content Warning: This novel contains racist slurs... Read An American Tragedy Summary
The third novel by Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed, is a work of family dramahistorical fiction that examines the factors surrounding one the factors that lead to and reverberate from one action: a poor family sells their youngest daughter to a wealthy couple in Kabul. Set in Afghanistan, the novel spans over fifty 50 years and four generations. Hosseini includes several narrative voices, rather than just the story’s main family. The multiple narrators provide... Read And the Mountains Echoed Summary
An Echo in the Bone (2009) is the seventh novel in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Combining elements of the historical fiction, adventure, fantasy, and romance genres, the series follows the adventures of Claire Randall, a WWII battle nurse who accidentally time travels to 18th-century Scotland and falls in love with Jamie Fraser, a Highland warrior. Over the course of 10 planned novels, Gabaldon follows Claire, Jamie, and their family as they navigate fate... Read An Echo in the Bone Summary
Written by Wallace Stegner and released in 1971, Angle of Repose is a novel about Lyman Ward, a wheelchair-bound historian who decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents, particularly his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward. He hopes that their experiences will help him deal with his present situation. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972 and is based on the letters of Mary Hallock Foote, which were later published as A Victorian Gentlewoman... Read Angle of Repose Summary
E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, published in 1924, tells a story of the power of colonialism, the tension between spirituality and morality, and the inescapability of evil. Forster wrote this novel after traveling to India in 1912 and volunteering in Egypt during World War I. A film adaptation of the novel directed by David Lean premiered in 1984 and received multiple Academy Award nominations. This summary uses the 75th Anniversary edition of A... Read A Passage to India Summary
Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War is a historical account of the secession movement in the antebellum Southern US written by Charles B. Dew. Dew is a distinguished professor of history at Williams College specializing in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras. Apostles of Disunion was published in 2001 by the University of Virginia Press and won the 2001 Fletcher Pratt Prize from the Civil War Round Table... Read Apostles of Disunion Summary
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard was first performed on April 13, 1993, at the Royal National Theatre in London. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it one of the best science-related works ever written.The play has dual plot lines, one historical and one modern, which share the same physical setting. In the 19th century, the play follows the young Thomasina, a mathematical genius far ahead of her time, and her tutor, Septimus Hodge... Read Arcadia Summary
A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by British author E. M. Forster. The novel is split between Italy and England, telling the story of Lucy Honeychurch, a young and spirited middle-class Englishwoman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery during a trip to Italy. During her travels, Lucy falls in love with the free-spirited and unconventional George Emerson, a fellow tourist, but is later forced to choose between her heart's desire and... Read A Room with a View Summary
Irish novelist and screenwriter Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. His work is renowned both for its treatment of Irish working-class life and its deployment of Dublin dialect. His 1993 masterpiece, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, won the Booker Prize. A Star Called Henry (1999) is the first in The Last Round Up trilogy, which follows the life of Henry, a working-class Dublin boy born at the turn of the 20th century. Henry’s... Read A Star Called Henry Summary
A Tale of Two Cities, published in 1859, is a historical drama written by Charles Dickens. The backdrop of the novel takes place in London and Paris prior to the French Revolution. The novel, told in three parts, has been adapted into numerous productions for film, theater, radio, and television.In 1775, a banker named Jarvis Lorry travels to Dover, where he meets a young, half-French woman named Lucie Manette. Together, the pair travel to Paris... Read A Tale of Two Cities Summary
Etaf Rum’s debut novel, A Woman Is No Man, was originally published in 2019. According to Rum, the novel, while fiction, relies heavily on autobiographical details. In fact, Rum’s life so closely parallels her characters’ lives that the narrative effectively blurs the line between fiction and memoir. Switching between past and present, the novel tells the intergenerational story of Isra, a Palestinian immigrant living in Brooklyn, and her daughter Deya, growing up in the same... Read A Woman Is No Man Summary
Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins is a middle grade/young adult coming-of-age novel about two boys—one Burmese, the other Karenni—growing up during an intense period of violence between the Burmese military and the Karenni people. The book was named an “ALA APALA Honor Book, Indies Choice Honor Book of the Year for Young Adults, ALA Top Ten Book in Best Fiction for Young Adults, [and] International Reading Association Notable Book for a Global Society [and received]... Read Bamboo People Summary
Originally written in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” (2018) is the transcribed posthumous autobiography of the life of Oluale “Cudjo Lewis” Kossola (1841-1935), written by Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960). Known for her involvement in the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston was a writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and filmmaker. In all her work, she held a special appreciation for Black life and Black culture of the US South. Her works... Read Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" Summary
A 2017 New York Times bestseller, Lisa Wingate’s Before We Were Yours is a haunting and compelling work of historical fiction told in polyvocal form with two alternating principle voices narrating a story of complex family history. From chapter to chapter, the book goes back and forth between present day South Carolina (in settings of Southern power and prestige) and Tennessee in the late 1930s and early 1940s (in settings of squalor and abuse). In... Read Before We Were Yours Summary
Behind the Bedroom Wall is a 1996 Young Adult historical fiction novel by Korean American author Laura E. Williams. The novel won the 1997 Jane Addams’ Children’s Book Award. Williams has written several other novels, including The Mystic Lighthouse series, Up a Creek, The Ghost Stallion, The Executioner’s Daughter, The Can Man, and Unexpected.Set in 1942 Germany, Behind the Bedroom Wall follows a 13-year-old Aryan German girl named Korinna Rehme, who is an active member... Read Behind the Bedroom Wall Summary
Mark Sullivan’s Beneath a Scarlet Sky is a coming-of-age historical novel that follows Pino Lella, a 17-year-old Milanese boy, as he navigates the dangers of Nazi-occupied Italy during the height of World War II. The novel is largely based on the real-life account of Pino Lella, who was an old man by the time he decided to share his story. Sullivan’s novel is based on Pino’s memories of events, interviews with Holocaust historians, Italian Catholic... Read Beneath a Scarlet Sky Summary
One of the most influential Christian novels of the 19th century, Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is a classic story of redemption and forgiveness, reimagining the stories of peripheral biblical figures, from Roman tax collectors and charioteers, to people with leprosy, fishermen, Pharisees, shepherds, John the Baptist, and Pontius Pilate. The story traces the life of the fictional main character Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman from Jerusalem whose future is upended when... Read Ben-Hur Summary
Black Robe is a 1985 historical fiction novel written by Brian Moore. It is set in the 17th century and tracks the journey of two Europeans—one of whom is a Jesuit priest—in New France. The two men find themselves caught between the two cultures shortly after the time of the first contact. Plot SummaryFather Laforgue awaits his orders from the Commandant of the new settlement of Québec, a small village that is home to around 100... Read Black Robe Summary
Blood Meridian, a 1985 novel by Cormac McCarthy, is one of the most celebrated works of modern American literature. The novel was inspired by people and events of the mid-19th century in the borderlands of the United States and Mexico. McCarthy’s works have won many honors including the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. Blood Meridian is often considered his greatest novel. This guide uses an eBook version of the 1992 First Vintage International edition... Read Blood Meridian Summary
Breakfast on Pluto is a novel by the distinguished Irish writer Patrick McCabe, who is known for his experimental style and controversial themes. First published in 1998, the book contains elements of fantasy and historical fiction. It presents the narrative of “the life and times” of Patrick Braden, a transgender person growing up in Ireland and London during the 1960s and 1970s. Through Braden’s journey of self-discovery, McCabe portrays a country amid turbulent political, national... Read Breakfast on Pluto Summary
Published in 1959, Brown Girl, Brownstones is American novelist Paule Marshall’s debut novel. Loosely based on the early events of Marshall’s life, the story explores Selina Boyce’s coming of age. Selina is the daughter of Deighton and Silla Boyce, Barbadian immigrants living in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s.Marshall structures the narrative in four parts. In the first, 10-year-old Selina plays in the Brooklyn brownstone where her family lives and listens to her... Read Brown Girl, Brownstones Summary
Burmese Days, written by George Orwell and published in 1934, is a critique of British imperialism and its effects on individuals and cultures. Set in the fictional district of Kyauktada in Upper Burma, at that time part of the British Raj, the novel tells the story of Flory, a 35-year-old English timber merchant who has spent his adult life in Burma. The novel focuses on the lonely Flory’s search for a wife, as well as... Read Burmese Days Summary
Caleb’s Crossing (2011) is a historical fiction novel based on the real life figure of Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard University in 1665. Born into the Wampanoag tribe on an island near Cape Cod, the historical Cheeshahteaumuck converted to Christianity and attended a preparatory school before enrolling in Harvard. In her novel, Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks tells a fictionalized version of Caleb’s story in the form of a... Read Caleb's Crossing Summary
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck was originally published in 1945. A Nobel Prize-winning writer, Steinbeck grew up in Salinas, California, which is near Monterey—the location of Cannery Row. Aside from a few years in Palo Alto, New York, and Los Angeles, Steinbeck spent most of his adult life living in Monterey County, and he drew on his personal experiences to write Cannery Row.Considered literary fiction or classic literature, Cannery Row is realistic and was written... Read Cannery Row Summary
Caramelo (2002) is a multi-generational family epic by American-Chicana author Sandra Cisneros. The novel follows the coming-of-age stories of Soledad Reyes; her son, Inocencio Reyes; and her granddaughter, Celaya “Lala” Reyes. The narrative takes place as the family moves among Chicago, Mexico City, and San Antonio. Written in a unique bilingual English and Spanish voice, Caramelo features themes of memory, Mexican-American heritage, female strength, and the search for a “home” between and beyond national borders. In... Read Caramelo Summary
Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth’s novel, Castle Rackrent ,first published in 1800, tells of the decline of a family from her own aristocratic class. Seeking to present an authentic picture of these corrupt, inefficient estate owners, Edgeworth invents narrator Thady Quirk, a faithful steward who recounts the fate of four Rackrent estate owners in unsparing details. He begins with relating how his grandfather was a driver for Patrick O’Shaughlin, who was descended from the Kings of... Read Castle Rackrent Summary
Cato, a Tragedy is a play written by Joseph Addison in 1712. Set in the Roman Republic during the reign of Julius Caesar, the play centers on the final days of the Stoic Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, a man of virtue who fiercely opposed Caesar. The play focuses on themes such as the importance of virtue and the battle between liberty and tyranny, and takes place in Utica, Tunisia, in the kingdom of Numidia, where... Read Cato, a Tragedy Summary
“Chickamauga” is a short story by Ambrose Bierce, first published in a collection of his stories in 1887. The name refers to a Civil War battlefield in Georgia.The story is set in the South during the Civil War. The story’s unnamed protagonist is a young boy, referred to throughout as “the child.” We are told that while the boy comes from a humble farming family, he is descended from victors and conquerors and has an... Read Chickamauga Summary
Christ in Concrete is a novel based on the real life of author Pietro di Donato, which he expanded from a short story that he placed in the magazine Esquire in 1937. Like the main character, Paul, di Donato was the son of an Italian immigrant bricklayer who died on the Christian holiday of Good Friday while working on the job. Also like Paul, di Donato became a child bricklayer, although he would go on... Read Christ in Concrete Summary
Published in 2018, Circe retells the story of the eponymous Greek mythological figure. Although traditionally viewed as a heartless, savagely beautiful witch who lures sailors to their deaths, the Circe of Madeline Miller’s imagining is quite different. This Circe is a multidimensional, flawed, and empathetic character struggling to find meaning and worth in her immortal life. Through Miller’s detailed and honest first-person narrative, which takes place over thousands of years, the evil witch becomes relatable.The... Read Circe Summary
City of Thieves, published in 2008, is a historical novel by Jewish American author David Benioff. The story is framed as the memories of the narrator’s grandfather, Lev Beniov. The story follows Lev, a Russian Jew, and Kolya, a Cossack soldier, during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II. The book was well received upon publication and later inspired the postapocalyptic video game The Last of Us. City of Thieves is the second novel... Read City of Thieves Summary
Cloud Atlas is a 2004 novel by British author David Mitchell. The sprawling narrative is composed of a series of nested stories, spanning centuries into the past and the future. In addition to winning numerous literary and science fiction awards, the novel was adapted into a 2012 film of the same name. This guide uses the 2014 Sceptre edition of Cloud Atlas.Content Warning: The novel and this guide depict slavery and discuss racism, death by... Read Cloud Atlas Summary
Coming Up For Air is an interwar novel written by British author George Orwell shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Originally published in 1939, the novel was written in Morocco while Orwell was recovering from injuries received while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Set in the late 1930s, the novel follows a middle-aged insurance salesman named George Bowling as he struggles with anxieties about the coming war. Like Orwell’s more famous novels... Read Coming Up for Air Summary
Corregidora is the first novel by Gayl Jones. It was originally published in 1975 and is considered a work of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), which was active in the 1960s and 70s. The book tells the story of Ursa Corregidora, a mixed, middle-aged songstress trying to make her way at the turn of the 1950s. Her overprotective husband, Mutt, opens the book by causing a ruckus at one of her shows. He is thrown out... Read Corregidora Summary
Bapsi Sidhwa’s historical fiction novel Cracking India, first published in India in 1988 as Ice-Candy-Man, was translated into English under its current title in 1991. The 1947 partition of India that created the majority-Muslim country of Pakistan shapes the events of the novel. The novel begins in 1942, when India was an English colony. When Britain declared war on behalf of India during World War II, the move galvanized long-standing Indian independence movements until India... Read Cracking India Summary
Cry, the Beloved Country is a 1948 work of historical fiction by Alan Paton. Set in South Africa, it follows a Christian reverend named Stephen Kumalo, who lives in a Zulu village called Ndotsheni. Geographically isolated from his brother John, his sister Gertrude, and his son Absalom, Stephen becomes worried when he stops hearing from them. He travels to Johannesburg to check up on them. Cry, the Beloved Country is known for illuminating a historically... Read Cry, the Beloved Country Summary
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s historical fiction novel Daisy Jones & The Six, published in 2019, is a contemporary work of fiction that explores the rich music culture of the 1970s in the United States. This time was known for rock ’n’ roll, partly as a cultural response to the strict rules of the 1960s and the disaster of the Vietnam War. The California dream world of hard partying, no rules, and freedom persists as a major... Read Daisy Jones & The Six Summary
Dangerous Liaisons is an epistolary novel (i.e., a story told through a series of letters) first published in 1782, seven years before the start of the French Revolution, by Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos. The story revolves around the scheming and manipulative activities of two aristocrats, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont. They take pleasure in seducing and ruining the reputations of others, using their wit and charm to manipulate those around them... Read Dangerous Liaisons Summary
Daniel Deronda is the last novel by George Eliot, published in 1876. The novel satirizes Victorian society, and its sympathetic portrayal of Jewish culture and ideas garnered controversy at the time of publication. It has been adapted for stage, television, and film.This guide is written using the 2014 Oxford World’s Classics edition.Content Warning: This guide contains references to a suicide attempt and antisemitism and antisemitic language that feature in the source text.Plot SummaryDaniel Deronda begins... Read Daniel Deronda Summary
Daughter of Fortune, first published in Spanish in 1998 (Hija de la fortuna), is the fifth novel by celebrated Latin American writer Isabel Allende. The winner of multiple awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Chile’s National Literature Prize, Allende created this work of historical fiction, in part, to explore the impact of feminism on her own life. Daughter of Fortune tells the story of a young woman, Eliza Sommers, and her odyssey of... Read Daughter Of Fortune Summary
Days Without End (2016) is a novel by Irish author Sebastian Barry. Days Without End is Barry’s ninth novel and received considerable critical acclaim. The novel won the 2017 Walter Scott Prize, was listed at number 74 on The Guardian’s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century (2019 edition), and made BBC News’s 2019 list of the 100 most influential novels. The novel also won the 2016 Costa Book Award, making Barry... Read Days Without End Summary
The narrator and protagonist, Sergeant Nathan Marx, sets the stage in the early paragraphs of the short story. The year is 1945, and he has just arrived to Camp Crowder, Missouri, after fighting in the war in Germany. Marx explains that he has undergone significant changes since his time as a combatant began, and he describes his transformation as beneficial: “I had been fortunate enough to develop an infantryman’s heart, which, like his feet, at... Read Defender Of The Faith Summary
Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a novel by Madeline Thein, which focuses on the 20th century Communist Revolution in China and its effects on multiple generations of Chinese citizens. This book won the Scotiabank Giller Prize as well as the Governor General’s Award. It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016. This guide refers the American paperback edition published by W.W. Norton.Plot SummaryDuring the first horrific years of the Revolution... Read Do Not Say We Have Nothing Summary
A New York Times Best Seller and winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize for fiction, Lily King’s novel Euphoria is inspired by the life and fieldwork of eminent American anthropologist Margaret Mead. Specifically, King looked at the time in 1933 when Mead, the woman whom protagonist Nell Stone is based on, went to what was then known as the Territory of New Guinea with anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Reo Fortune. In the Acknowledgements at the... Read Euphoria Summary
First published in Spanish in 1987, Eva Luna is a novel written by celebrated Chilean writer Isabel Allende and later translated into English by Margaret Sayers Peden the following year. The story is set in an unnamed South American country believed to be an amalgamation of Chile and Venezuela. The eponymous Eva Luna narrates the epic story of her life against a backdrop inspired by the sociopolitical changes in South America from the mid-1940s to... Read Eva Luna Summary
Fair and Tender Ladies, by Lee Smith, was published in 1988. It is an epistolary novel, told through letters written by a Virginia mountain girl named Ivy Rowe to various recipients, and spans the course of Ivy’s life from childhood in the early 1900s to her death in the 1970s. Plot Summary When Fair and Tender Ladies begins, Ivy Rowe is a poor, mostly uneducated girl from Sugar Fork, Virginia, who has begun writing letters at... Read Fair and Tender Ladies Summary
Falling Man is a 2007 novel by American author Don DeLillo. The novel explores the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. This guide uses an eBook version of the 2011 Picador edition of Falling Man.Plot SummaryOn September 11, 2001, a group of 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacks commercial passenger planes and attempt to crash them into American landmarks. In addition to one plane that crashed... Read Falling Man Summary
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett, published in 2010, is a historical novel and the first installment of the Century Trilogy. The trilogy takes place during the 20th century and is told through the points of view of five interconnected families from Wales, Germany, America, and Russia. Fall of Giants spans World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the women’s suffrage movement. Winter of the World, the second book in the trilogy, takes place against... Read Fall Of Giants Summary
Fall on Your Knees (1996), first-time novelist Ann-Marie MacDonald’s ambitious multigenerational family saga set in the early decades of the 20th century, moves from the bleak coastal towns of Canada’s Cape Breton Island to the bustling New York City of the Jazz Era. Recalling both the psychological richness of William Faulkner’s family sagas set in Yoknapatawpha County and the dark passions in the Gothic tales of Flannery O’Connor, Fall on Your Knees follows three very... Read Fall on your Knees Summary
A thrilling tale of thievery, betrayal, and mistaken identity, Fingersmith, by Welsh author Sarah Waters, tells the story of two women from two very different stations of life whose fates are inextricably linked. Set in the 1860s, Fingersmith is narrated alternately by Sue Smith (also known as Sue Trinder) and Maud Lilly. One is a young “fingersmith”—slang for a thief—lovingly protected from the worst of her world by Mrs. Sucksby; the other is an aristocratic... Read Fingersmith Summary
First published in 1994, Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai won critical acclaim for its portrayal of a young man’s coming of age as a gay Sri Lankan during the civil war crisis. It won a Lambda Literary Award and the Books in Canada First Novel Award and tackles navigating sexuality, class partisanship, and emigration.Plot SummaryFunny Boy narrates the tale of young Arjie (Arjun) Chelvaratnam, a “funny” boy growing up in an upper-middle-class Sri Lankan home... Read Funny Boy Summary
Published in 2004, Gilead is Marilynne Robinson’s second novel and the first in the Gilead trilogy, which includes Home (2008) and Lila (2014). The story is written as a letter from dying Congregationalist minister John Ames to his young son. The letter is a bittersweet account of John’s life. With a slow, thoughtful pace and intimate tone, John shares past family memories and resolves an old personal grievance with his best friend’s son. As John... Read Gilead Summary
Susan Vreeland, author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, (Penguin Books, 2000) was an internationally known author of art-related historical fiction who, after a long and notable literary career, died in 2017. A New York Times bestseller, the novel was originally published in 1999 by McMurray and Beck, but subsequent editions were published by Penguin Books. The novel’s popularity gave rise to a 2003 Hallmark Hall of Fame production based on the novel. The painting in... Read Girl In Hyacinth Blue Summary
In Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, the subject of Johannes Vermeer’s most famous painting is brought to life. The “girl with the pearl earring” is Griet, the Vermeers’ housemaid, hired in particular to clean Vermeer’s studio without disturbing its order. For this task, Vermeer needs someone who is exceedingly careful and invested in his artistic endeavors, beyond the promise of (meager) payment. Griet is fascinated by Vermeer’s way of seeing the world, his... Read Girl With a Pearl Earring Summary
“Gooseberries,” by Russian author Anton Chekhov, is a short story that uses symbolism, subtlety, irony, and keen observation of human behavior to explore themes of the quest for happiness, the meaning of life, social expectations, privilege, and social equality. Written in mid-1898, the story is the second in what was later referred to as The Little Trilogy, together with “The Man in the Case” and “About Love.” All three stories explore the definitions of happiness... Read Gooseberries Summary
Jeannette Walls describes her book Half Broke Horses as a “True-Life Novel,” as it describes the life of her real-life grandmother Lily Casey Smith. The book is told in the first person from the perspective of Lily as she grows up in the harsh desert southwest. While the book is classified as a novel (since Walls was unable to back-up all of the facts about Smith’s life), it reads more like a memoir. Walls begins... Read Half Broke Horses Summary
Chimamanda Adichie’s second book, Half of a Yellow Sun, is set during the Nigerian Civil War that tragically occurred in her home country during the 1960s. The story masterfully revolves around an intricate web of shifting viewpoints, each of which centers around one of the novel’s five main characters: Ugwu, Odenigbo, Olanna, Kainene, and Richard. All of these characters find themselves affiliated with the Biafran rebels of the war, and this affiliation eventually has consequences... Read Half of a Yellow Sun Summary
His Bloody Project: A Historical Thriller, written by Graeme Macrae Burnet, is a historical crime novel originally published in 2015. Presented as a series of fictionalized historical documents compiled by Burnet, the story concerns a gruesome triple homicide perpetrated by Roderick Macrae, a young farmer living in the Scottish Highland in the mid-19th century. Told through a number of often-contradictory perspectives, the novel deals with the nature of free will, the origins of criminal behavior... Read His Bloody Project Summary
Homegoing is a historical fiction novel by Yaa Gyasi, a Ghanaian-American novelist born in 1989. Homegoing was published in 2016 and was awarded the 2017 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the 2016 John Leonard Prize for outstanding debut novel, and the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award in 2016. Written in the tradition of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976), Gyasi tells the story of one 18th-century Akan family, tracking it across... Read Homegoing Summary
Hope Leslie, or Early Times in the Massachusetts, is a novel by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Published as two volumes in 1827, it received critical acclaim and success. Given the time in which it was published, and the time and place it portrays (seventeenth-century New England), it is impossible to read Hope Leslie without comparing it to contemporary novels such as The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper. Many have argued that Sedgwick’s place... Read Hope Leslie Summary
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is a historical novel published in 2009. The story follows Henry Lee at two pivotal stages in his life—in 1942, when he is a 12-year-old with a crush on a Japanese girl, and in 1986, when he is recently widowed. The book, Ford’s debut novel, spent 130 weeks atop the New York Times Best-Seller List and won the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature... Read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Summary
E. M. Forster’s Howards End (1910) tells the story of two families, the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes, who represent different aspects of society in Edwardian England. Specifically, it follows the Margaret Schlegel, the novel’s protagonist, amid her attempts to manage her own family as she becomes engaged to and marries the widowed Mr. Wilcox. In 1992 it was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, directed by James Ivory, and in 2017 it was adapted into... Read Howards End Summary
In the Castle of My Skin is a semiautobiographical novel by Caribbean author George Lamming, first published in 1970. The novel follows in the footsteps of other Caribbean narratives, a style of literature that initially grew out of the disconnect between an old world (Africa) and a new world (the Americas). Many Caribbean authors attempted to explain, disrupt, query, fuse, or simply explore dual consciousnesses brought about by traditions coming into contact with new ways... Read In the Castle of My Skin Summary
In the Name of Salomé, first published in 2000, is the fourth novel by Dominican-American author Julia Alvarez. Alvarez is a poet as well as a novelist and has also written essays, nonfiction works, and children’s books. Alvarez was born in the United States but raised in the Dominican Republic, and her work focuses heavily on the experience of a Latina assimilating into American culture. Her family’s political activity in their homeland and her own... Read In the Name of Salome Summary
In the Shadow of the Banyan (2012) is a historical fiction novel by the Cambodian American author Vaddey Ratner. Set in the 1970s during the Cambodian genocide, the book’s perspective is from Raami, a seven-year-old girl and the daughter of a minor prince whose family is among the millions of Cambodians persecuted by the Khmer Rouge. While Raami’s story hews very closely to Ratner’s own real-life experiences, the author chose to write a work of... Read In The Shadow Of The Banyan Summary
The novel is set in the Dominican Republic, in both 1994—the “present day”—and during the period of Trujillo’s regime. In 1994, Dedé Mirabal lives in the house where her three sisters—Minerva, Patria and María Teresa—and her family used to live. Her dead sisters are known as the “butterflies,” they are martyrs and national heroes. In 1994, Dedé talks to an interviewer about her sisters’ lives and deaths. Her narrative is interspersed with her own memories... Read In the Time of the Butterflies Summary
Since Lynn Nottage’s first major play, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, opened in 1995, Nottage has become one of the most significant original voices in the American theatre. She began to receive acclaim and national attention with the 2004 Off-Broadway premiere of Intimate Apparel, which featured Viola Davis as Esther. In 2004, Intimate Apparel won an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and an AUDELCO Viv Award, which recognizes excellence in... Read Intimate Apparel Summary
Nayomi Munaweera was born in Sri Lanka in 1973 as ethnic tensions on the island nation were rising. Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) is her first novel and a work of fiction built upon real events leading up to and during the Sri Lankan Civil War that lasted from 1983 to 2009. The story explores cyclical ethnic tension and the impacts of civil war from the perspectives of two female narrators, one from the... Read Island of a Thousand Mirrors Summary
Part I relates the story of Tituba from her birth to her arrival in Salem. Part II begins with the witch trials and ends with Tituba’s execution in Barbados in the 1700s. The Epilogue, narrated by Tituba’s spirit, brings the story from the century of her death to that of the present-day reader. Following the Epilogue are two sections that Condé included in the original French publication: a Historical Note on the Salem witch trials... Read I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem Summary
Jayber Crow, published in 2000 by Counterpoint, is one of author Wendell Berry’s 80 novels and is set in the fictional town of Port William on the banks of the Kentucky River. Berry’s works focus on the agrarian lifestyle he practices in his personal life living and working a farm in rural Kentucky. Many of his novels share what he calls the “Port William membership” and have overlapping characters and settings examining similar themes of... Read Jayber Crow Summary
Jews Without Money is a semi-autobiographical 1930 novel by Itzok Isaac Granich, published under Granich’s pseudonym, Mike Gold. The book charts the impoverished conditions of the Lower East Side of New York City and the experiences of growing up in a community of predominantly Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century. Growing up in such a difficult environment informed the author’s socialist politics as an adult. Plot SummaryMike Gold is born and raised by a... Read Jews Without Money Summary
Margaret Walker’s 1966 novel, Jubilee, is based on the story of Walker’s maternal great-grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown. The historical fiction novel is sometimes described as a corollary to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind—the epic story of a strong Southern woman who lives during the antebellum period, the Civil War, and Reconstruction; though, the Southern woman in this story is black, and her strength comes from having endured the withering degradation of slavery.Plot SummaryJubilee... Read Jubilee Summary
Kim is a novel by the prolific author and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who was the first English-language recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel was originally released in a serialized version in 1900-1901, after which it was published in book form. It offers a wide-ranging view of the cultural and religious diversity of British India in the late-19th century, as perceived through the experience of an Indian-enculturated Irish boy named Kim. Along... Read Kim Summary
The 1979 novel Kindred was written by Octavia E. Butler, a Black author from California who wrote science fiction that challenged white hegemony. The novel tells the story of Edana “Dana” Franklin, a young Black woman in 1976 whose connection to a young white boy named Rufus Weylin allows her to time travel to 1800s Maryland. As she jumps between 1976 and the 1800s, she learns how she and Rufus are connected, and she must survive... Read Kindred Summary
Inspired by real events, Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands is Susan Carol McCarthy’s debut novel, published in 2002. The novel received the Chautauqua South Fiction Prize, and it tells the story of a twelve-year-old girl named Reesa McMahon who lives in Mayflower, Florida. Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands is considered both a Bildungsroman as well as a work of historical fiction thanks to the presence of historical figures important to the American civil... Read Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands Summary
Like Water for Chocolate is the debut novel of Laura Esquivel, published in Mexico in 1989 and then translated into English by Carol and Thomas Christensen. Esquivel has sold over four million copies of the novel worldwide. She is a novelist and active politician serving in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. She collaborated with her husband at the time to adapt the novel into a film in 1992, which was then nominated for a Golden... Read Like Water for Chocolate Summary
Lilac Girls is a historical fiction novel by Martha Hall Kelly. Published in 2016, Kelly’s debut novel is inspired by the true story of New York City activist and socialite Caroline Ferriday. Kelly was also inspired by the true story of the Ravensbrück Rabbits, a group of Polish women who were victims of torturous medical experiments during the Second World War. The novel explores the themes of hope, sacrifice, and forgiveness in the face of... Read Lilac Girls Summary
The novel Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, published by Random House in 2017, offers a portrait of an American legend in mourning, surrounded by a poignant but funny cast of 166 characters. It is Saunders’s debut novel, though he has been a notable author of short story collections for decades. The novel won the prestigious Man Booker Prize and was a New York Times best seller.Set in 1862, Lincoln in the Bardo is... Read Lincoln in the Bardo Summary
Little Bee, a 2010 novel by Chris Cleave, follows a teenage Nigerian refugee as her life intertwines with Sarah Summers, Andrew O’Rourke, and Charlie O’Rourke. Cleave imagines a singular scene on a beach in Nigeria that unites Little Bee to the O’Rourke-Summers family. As both Little Bee and Sarah slowly tell and retell their stories of that event and those before and after it, their voices slowly unite. Bridging across countries and blending into a... Read Little Bee Summary
Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood is a fictionalized autobiography and bildungsroman by author and literature professor Richard E. Kim (1932-2009). Originally published in 1970, Lost Names is a collection of seven scenes from Kim’s life from 1932 (birth) to 1945 (age 13). Kim examines the Korean experience of Japanese colonial occupation through the eyes of himself as a child. Though it is autobiographical, Kim was ambivalent about its status as fiction or nonfiction:... Read Lost Names Summary
American author Louise Erdrich’s debut novel, Love Medicine, was first published in 1984 to critical acclaim. A bestseller and winner of the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the novel follows three generations of members from five Ojibwe families in Minnesota and North Dakota. Lyrical, metaphorical, and a complex exploration of oppression, joy, and family, the novel is both a record of history and an analysis of love. Blending the genres of historical... Read Love Medicine Summary
Manhattan Beach is a 2017 novel by American writer Jennifer Egan. Born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco, Egan, now a New Yorker, did much of her research for the novel at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Using oral histories, photographs, and other supporting documents, she reconstructed the vibrant world of the wartime Brooklyn Naval Yard and Coney Island. The novel won the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, was long-listed for the... Read Manhattan Beach Summary
Man of La Mancha, by Dale Wasserman, Joe Darion, and Mitch Leigh, took the world of musical theater by storm when it premiered in 1965. This story of Miguel de Cervantes and his comic knight, Don Quixote, won five Tony Awards as well as the Drama Critics Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Variety Drama Critics Award, and the Saturday Review Award. The original production ran for over 2,000 performances and remains popular... Read Man of La Mancha Summary
August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom premiered in 1984, as part of Wilson’s Century Cycle, also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle. The Century Cycle is a series of ten plays, each exploring the black experience in the United States during a different decade of the 20th century. Although Wilson wrote a few other plays, the Century Cycle constitutes the bulk of his life’s work as one of the most significant African-American playwrights in American theatre... Read Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Summary
March is mostly told from the perspective of Mr. March, a military chaplain assisting Union soldiers during the Civil War. In the opening sequence, Mr. March tries to save the life of a wounded soldier but fails. This marks the first death for which he holds himself responsible, providing a foundation for his increasingly guilty conscience. His wartime assignment brings him to a plantation that he recognizes from his youth, sending him into a detailed flashback:... Read March Summary
Martin Eden is a 1909 novel by American author Jack London. Known for his stories of adventure and use of naturalism and realism, London authored more than 50 books, including Call of the Wild and White Fang, before his untimely death at age 40. London wrote Martin Eden at the height of his literary career, inspired by his own disillusionment with fame and literary critics. Although the protagonist’s individualist principles are at odds with London’s... Read Martin Eden Summary
Medicine River, originally published in 1989, is a novel by Thomas King, one of the most prolific Indigenous American writers of the 20th century. The title of the novel takes its name from the town in Alberta, Canada, where the characters live, near a Blackfoot reservation. Their stories, as told by protagonist Will, delve into themes such as Friendship and Forbearance within the frame of Life in an Alberta Blackfoot Community. As Will tells these... Read Medicine River Summary
Memoirs of a Geisha is a novel by American author Arthur Golden narrated by a Japanese woman named Sayuri. The story begins when Sayuri (then known as Chiyo) is a child, living in a fishing village with her parents and sister, Satsu. Her modest lifestyle is turned on its head when she meets a man named Mr. Tanaka, who not only runs a fishing company but, unbeknownst to her, also procures girls to work as... Read Memoirs of a Geisha Summary
Mexican Gothic is a feminist Gothic novel by Mexican writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia, who currently resides in Canada. Set in 1950s Mexico City and the burned-out mining town of El Triunfo, the novel is a horror-tinged thriller in which Noemí Taboada, a socialite with aspirations to become an anthropologist, goes to El Triunfo to rescue her cousin Catalina from the Doyles. The Doyles are an impoverished family of English silver barons who have united with a... Read Mexican Gothic Summary
Charles S. Johnson’s Middle Passage, winner of the National Book Award for fiction, was published in 1990. Set in New Orleans and on the Atlantic Ocean, the historical novel centers on the disastrous voyage of the slave ship Republic.In 1830, Rutherford Calhoun, an ex-slave from Illinois, stows away on the Republic to avoid debts he owes to underworld boss Papa Zeringue or marriage to Isadora Bailey, who has offered to pay off those debts. Once... Read Middle Passage Summary
Mudbound is a 2008 novel by author Hillary Jordan. It is set in the southern delta of Mississippi in the years immediately following World War II. Over the course of the story, the fates of two intertwined families are irreversibly changed by a tragedy provoked by virulent racism. The novel explores themes of love, family, loyalty, duty, and the uneasy relationship African Americans have had with the South in the years following emancipation. As the... Read Mudbound Summary
Published in 1973, Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo is a novel that decenters the Westernized, Judeo-Christian historical perspective and compels the reader to see history through a more Afrocentric lens. The novel incorporates nontraditional storytelling techniques such as linear distortion, footnotes, photographs, and charts. It is often affiliated with postmodernism and Afrofuturism.The story begins in 1920. There is an outbreak of Jes Grew, which is spreading toward Harlem, where the novel is primarily set. Those who... Read Mumbo Jumbo Summary
Paulette Jiles’s novel, News of the World, tells the tale of 72-year-old Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd and 10-year-old Johanna Leonberger's journey from Wichita, Texas to Castroville, Texas in 1870, and how that journey would forever and drastically change the course of each of their lives.The story begins in Wichita, Texas, in the early spring of 1870, with Captain Kidd hanging posters advertising his reading of the news. He travels the state reading newspapers to people... Read News of the World Summary
Noli Me Tángere (1887)—which translates to “Touch Me Not” in Latin—is a novel written by Filipino writer José Rizal. The novel tells the story of Don Crisóstomo Ibarra, a young man of Filipino and Spanish descent who returns to the Philippines after a seven-year trip to Europe. Upon his return, and because he is now old enough to better understand the world, Ibarra sees the oppression wrought on the Indigenous population by Spanish colonialism. As... Read Noli Me Tángere Summary
No Sugar is a four-act play written by Jack Davis. It is the story of an Aboriginal family’s struggles for dignity, equality, and justice during the Australian depression of the 1930s. It has much in common with other literary touchstones of activism, such as John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and more. Like Steinbeck’s novel, No Sugar centers on a particular family and their antagonists, both circumstantial and personal. The... Read No Sugar Summary
Novel Without a Name, first published in English in 1995, tells the story of a young North Vietnamese soldier named Quan whose physical and emotional journey draws heavily from Vietnamese author Duong Thu Huong’s own life. Novel Without a Name is her third book. Other works by this author include Paradise of the Blind, Beyond Illusions, No Man's Land, and Memories of a Pure Spring.At the start of the novel, Quan is with his military... Read Novel Without a Name Summary
Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff is the first installment of a historical fiction trilogy originally published in 1990 that explores the lives of a Māori family in early 1990s New Zealand. In the first year of its publication, it won the PEN Best First Book award and was the runner-up for the Goodman Fielder Wattie Award. In 1994, Once Were Warriors was optioned and made into a movie of the same name, which won... Read Once Were Warriors Summary
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, first published in 1962 in the USSR, is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It follows the protagonist, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, during a typical day in the forced labor camp where he is imprisoned. The novel explores the human cost of Stalinism in Soviet Russia. Shukhov and the other prisoners waver between unity and division as they attempt to survive in the labor camp, which is situated far... Read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Summary
One of Ours is a 1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Willa Cather, an American author best known for depictions of life in the Great Plains. This novel follows the personal evolution of a young man named Claude Wheeler, dividing his story into two parts: his life on a family farm in Nebraska, and his experiences as a soldier in France during World War I. Exploring themes of youthful restlessness, the search for meaning, and the... Read One Of Ours Summary
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline recounts the stories of two extraordinary women: Vivian, a 91 year-old wealthy retiree, and 17 year-old Molly, a troubled orphan living in foster-care. On the surface, these women would seem to have nothing in common; however, as they get to know each other’s stories, they come to understand the many ways in which they share life experiences and emotional truths. They become unlikely, but true, friends.Operating primarily as a... Read Orphan Train Summary
Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black is an autobiographical novel first published in 1859 by Harriet E. Wilson. Rediscovered by renowned African-American literary critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in 1981, it was republished and redistributed with wider appeal than its initial publication.The autobiographical novel tells a fictionalized version of Wilson’s life story through the character of Frado, who is also known as “Nig” by other white people. Frado is born to... Read Our Nig Summary
Outlander, published by Random House in 1991, is the first in a highly successful romantic novel series written by Diana Gabaldon, a #1 New York Times bestselling author. The series was adapted into a historical drama television series in 2014.Plot SummaryTold from the perspective of 27-year-old Englishwoman Claire Beauchamp, Outlander begins in 1945 in Inverness, Scotland. Former WWII nurse Claire Beauchamp and her historian husband Frank Randall have returned to Scotland to reconnect after several... Read Outlander Summary
Out of This Furnace is a multi-generational narrative about a Slovak family’s immigration to America. As an immigrant narrative focusing on three separate, yet intertwined generations, the story looks at the tenuous journey of the family as it makes its way from Hungary to America, including all the ups and downs associated with immigrant life as the Kracha family’s lives evolve along with the so-called American Dream.The narrative begins with George “Djuro” Kracha, who boards... Read Out of This Furnace Summary
Pachinko, written by Min Jin Lee and published in 2017, is the story of five generations of a Korean family living in both Korea and then later Japan from 1910 to 1989. Pachinko was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2017. In Book 1, “Gohyang/Hometown 1910-1933,” the opening setting is the village of Yeongdo, Korea. The reader is introduced to the first generation of the family, the mother and father of... Read Pachinko Summary
Pale Horse, Pale Rider is a novella written by Katherine Anne Porter. It was published in 1939, along with two other short novellas, Old Mortality and Noon Wine, under the collective title Pale Horse, Pale Rider. The story portrays two young lovers who are tragically affected by the 1918 influenza epidemic, or Spanish Flu.This guide uses an eBook version of the 2008 Library of America edition.Plot SummaryMiranda is a young female theater critic who lives... Read Pale Horse, Pale Rider Summary
Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise was published in 1997, just a few years after she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. According to Morrison, it is the last book of a trilogy that includes Beloved and Jazz. Morrison is an esteemed American novelist, having also received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1998) and the Coretta Scott King Award for Authors (2005), among other awards. She was educated at Howard University and Cornell University, and... Read Paradise Summary
Paradise of the Blind (1988) is a fictional novel written by Duong Thu Huong, a dissident Vietnamese writer and former Communist Party member who openly criticizes the disillusionment of communism through her writings. As a former Communist Youth Brigade leader, Duong was in a unique position to observe the political and social chaos of communist Vietnam. Paradise of the Blind is set against the backdrop of Land Reform, the official state-run attempt at land redistribution... Read Paradise of the Blind Summary
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844) is a Gothic short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) first published in The United States Magazines and Democratic Review. In 1846, it was republished in a collection of stories and sketches, Mosses from an Old Manse. Hawthorne was a leader of the Dark Romantic or Gothic movement in American literature. His close friends included fellow Massachusetts writers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson.The work is prefaced by Hawthorne, who claims to... Read Rappaccini's Daughter Summary
Seamus Deane’s 1996 novel, Reading in the Dark, was named a New York Times Notable Book and won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. It follows an unnamed narrator living in Derry, Northern Ireland, from the 1940s until the 1970s. Each of the book’s six chapters is divided into several short fragments, which provide snapshots of a character, event, or aspect of the narrator’s world. Throughout the novel, the dominant narrative is the mystery surrounding Uncle... Read Reading in the Dark Summary
Jacqueline Woodson’s 2019 Red at the Bone is a work of fiction that centers on the coming together of two dissimilar families because of a teen pregnancy. Highly acclaimed and award-winning author Woodson offers a counternarrative to the familiar tale of teenage pregnancy while considering how identity intersects with class, race, sexuality, gender, and history. This study guide was created with the aid of the Riverhead Books 2019 hardback edition. Plot SummaryThe novel opens 80... Read Red at the Bone Summary
Red River is a 2008 novel of historical fiction by Lalita Tademy, largely based on the history of her father’s family. Previously, Lalita Tademy wrote Cane River, which was selected for Oprah’s Book Club and is another historical fiction book, this one based on her maternal relatives. Red River takes place over almost 50 years, following four generations of the Tademy family. The central event in the book is the Colfax Massacre, a true to... Read Red River Summary
Riders of the Purple Sage is a novel by western writer Zane Grey. Set in 1871, the novel follows the story of Jane Withersteen, a Mormon woman being persecuted by her church leaders for refusing to become the third wife of church leader, Elder Tull, as well as her fondness for non-Mormons, or gentile, settlers in the area. The novel first appeared as a 19-part series in the magazine, Field and Stream, in January of... Read Riders of the Purple Sage Summary
Published in 2011, Rules of Civility is American author Amor Towles’ acclaimed debut novel. Set at the end of the 1930s during The Great Depression, the narrative follows spunky roommates Katey Kontent and Evelyn Ross as they make their way up the social ladder in New York society. Though much of the narrative takes place at the end of the 1930s, the preface and epilogue are set in 1966 and provide a bookended point of... Read Rules of Civility Summary
Saturday is a novel by Ian McEwan, first published in 2005 by Jonathan Cape. Ian McEwan is an acclaimed British author who has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. In Saturday, McEwan delves into the inner life of a single individual, Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon living in London. The novel takes place over the course of a single day, February 15, 2003, against the... Read Saturday Summary
Schindler’s List (originally titled Schindler’s Ark) is a 1982 historical novel by Australian author Thomas Keneally. It tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party who used his position as a German industrialist to save more than 1,200 people’s lives during the war. In protecting as many people as he could from the genocidal Nazi regime, Schindler risked being sent to a concentration camp himself. Keneally wrote the novel with the... Read Schindler's List Summary
Sea of Poppies, a novel by Amitav Ghosh published in 2008, tells the intertwining stories of several people who find themselves aboard the Ibis, a former slave ship, in the early 19th century. The principal characters are aboard the ship under varying and more and less desirable circumstances, and employing varying levels of deception. The novel takes place shortly before the First Opium War, and its major themes are of imperialism and colonialism under a... Read Sea of Poppies Summary
Shantaram is a 2003 novel by Gregory David Roberts. Written as a semi-autobiographical telling of his adventures as one of the most wanted men in 1980s Australia, Shantaram tells the story of Lindsay Ford (who usually goes by “Lin”), who, after fleeing from an Australian prison, escapes to Mumbai. He falls in love with the country and rises through the ranks of a criminal organization led by Abdel Khader Khan.At the time of its publication... Read Shantaram Summary
Shogun is a 1975 novel by American author James Clavell. It is one of six books in Clavell’s Asian Saga, which chronicles the ways Europeans interacted with countries in Asia from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The novel tells the story of English ship pilot John Blackthorne, loosely based on the real life navigator William Adams, who becomes intimately involved in the rise to power of Yoshi Toranaga, a fictionalized version of Tokugawa Ieyasu... Read Shogun Summary
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is the third novel by Mary Ann Evans, published under the pseudonym George Eliot. The realist novel portrays the life of a weaver in 1800s England against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution. The novel has been adapted into films, radio plays, theatrical productions, and television shows.This guide refers to the 2021 Alma Classics edition. Content Warning: This guide discusses addiction and depression, which feature in Silas Marner.Plot SummarySilas... Read Silas Marner Summary
“Slave on the Block” is a short story by Langston Hughes that originally appeared in the September 1933 issue of Scribner's Magazine. The story was later published in The Ways of White Folks, a 1934 collection of Hughes’s short stories.This study guide, based on the 1990 Vintage Classics print edition, quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.Anne and Michael Carraway are affluent white bohemians who live in Greenwich Village—and often visit Harlem—during the... Read Slave on the Block Summary
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a frame tale, a story within a story, as told by an eighty-year-old Chinese woman, reflecting on her life and preparing for her death. In the first and last chapter, the narrator Lily reveals that she is dictating the story to Peony, the wife of her grandson, as a form of confession to her friend Snow Flower who is now in the afterworld. Lily was born to a... Read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan Summary
Best-selling author Kristina McMorris’s historical fiction novel Sold on a Monday (2018) is inspired by a real life event: A photograph published in a 1948 magazine of four siblings standing on their apartment steps with their mother (who is trying to hide her face from the photographer), and a sign advertising the children for sale in the foreground. The overarching theme of the novel is how one person’s poor decision can have many unexpected, and... Read Sold on a Monday Summary
Lawrence Hill’s novel Someone Knows My Name was first published in Canada in 2007 under the title The Book of Negroes. This work of historical fiction was published with its new title in the United States in 2008. The novel won the 2007 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.Inspired by the historical document the “Book of Negroes,” a record of escaped African slaves who found freedom in Canada, Hill set... Read Someone Knows My Name Summary
Song Yet Sung by James McBride is a 2008 historical fiction novel that takes place in 1850 on the eastern shore of Maryland. The central character, Liz Spocott, is a runaway slave who experiences strange dreams of the future with disturbing images that the reader can recognize as twentieth-century scenes. The novel employs magical realism and weaves historically accurate details with supernatural elements. Themes of race, class, gender, geography, and the consequences of the institution... Read Song Yet Sung Summary
The British Partition of Indian had countless disastrous consequences, many of which are rendered in heartbreaking fashion in Bhisham Sahni’s novel, Tamas. Sahni lived through the 1947 riots depicted in the book. In hindsight, Partition was enforced in a thoughtless, naïve fashion. Essentially, it was a division of the British Indian Empire intended to separate Hindus and Muslims. The creation of Pakistan, which was to be the home of India’s Muslim population, was a direct... Read Tamas Summary
American writer Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Age Of Innocence (1920) was a post-armistice reflection on the 1870s New York society of her youth. Wharton, an American who lived abroad in Paris, was already the successful author of other novels, including The House of Mirth (1905) and Ethan Frome (1911). In a The New York Times article, Elif Batuman reflects that “eventually, each classic tells two stories: its own, and the story of all... Read The Age of Innocence Summary
The Alice Network is the seventh novel by author Kate Quinn. First published in 2017, the book is classified as historical fiction. It became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and was also listed as a Summer Pick by Good Housekeeping, Parade, Library Journal, and Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club. Quinn has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga and two books set during the Italian Renaissance. The Alice Network and her... Read The Alice Network Summary
Originally written in German and published in 2002, Jan-Philipp Sendker’s debut novel, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, was translated into English by Kevin Wiliarty in 2006. An international bestseller, the novel received the Indies Choice Honor Award for Best Fiction Novel in 2013. In response to such acclaim, Sendker penned a sequel, A Well-Tempered Heart, in 2012. The novel is international in scope—being written by a German journalist who lived in upstate New York, detailing... Read The Art of Hearing Heartbeats Summary
Elif Shafak’s 2006 novel The Bastard of Istanbul weaves together the stories of two rival cultures, those of the Turks and the Armenians—peoples who haven’t yet healed from the wound opened by the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Shafak uses the stories of two families—the Turkish Kazancis and the Armenian Tchakhmakchians—who live seemingly disparate lives on two different continents but are connected by a past that reveals how deeply interconnected these families and historical enemies are. Shafak uses... Read The Bastard of Istanbul Summary
The Birth House is a work of historical fiction written by Canadian novelist Ami McKay and published in 2009. The book was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and won three Libris Awards from the Canadian Booksellers Association. The story takes place in the early 20th century during World War I and is set primarily in Scots Bay, a small shipbuilding community in Nova Scotia, Canada. While she is originally from Indiana, McKay... Read The Birth House Summary
Published in 2015, The Blackthorn Key is a children’s historical fantasy novel by Kevin Sands. Set in 17th-century London, the story follows Christopher Rowe, the young apprentice to a successful apothecary, as he puts all his skills to the test to uncover a terrible secret that is threatening the city’s apothecaries. After earning his degree in theoretical physics, Sands has worked as a business consultant and teacher. The Blackthorn Key, his debut novel, is the first book in... Read The Blackthorn Key Summary
Not far from Cincinnati in 1830 lies a “great forest” occupied by the scattered homes of early settlers. Among them is an old, neglected cabin with a front door and boarded-up window. For decades, a white-haired man named Murlock has lived there; he looks 70 but is really 50. He lets his yard grow wild and provides for himself by selling animal skins.Murlock is found dead at his cabin, apparently of natural causes. He’s buried... Read The Boarded Window Summary
The Bondwoman’s Narrative is an autobiographical novel by Hannah Crafts, unpublished at the time of composition but rediscovered in 2002 by literary scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. The story follows Hannah’s journey as an enslaved person in Virginia and North Carolina before her self-emancipation and move to New Jersey. The book is likely the first novel written by an African American enslaved woman in the United States of America and the only written by a... Read The Bondwoman's Narrative Summary
Aminata Diallo, from the village of Bayo, in western Africa, is the daughter of Mamadu, a jeweler, and Sira, a midwife. At the age of eleven, she is kidnapped after watching her parents murdered and her village burned. She is captured by African slave traders, who sell her to white slave traders. She and the other captives are marched in a coffle, a line of prisoners chained together, on a harrowing three-month journey to the... Read The Book of Negroes Summary
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a historical novel by American author Kim Michele Richardson. Published in 2019, the book takes place in the Kentucky hills during the Great Depression in 1936. In its depiction of prejudice and community in 1930s Kentucky, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek touches upon themes including the distrust of authority, the random and dangerous nature of prejudice, the power of community, and the importance of caring.Content Warning: The... Read The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek Summary
The Bridge on the Drina is a 1945 historical fiction novel by Ivo Andrić, translated from Serbo-Croat by Lovett F. Edwards. It tells the story of a bridge built in Višegrad that linked disparate communities from the east and west. Plot Summary The novel opens with a description of the scenery surrounding Višegrad, a fertile valley with high forested mountains on either side. The bridge spans the Drina, the largest river, and a second smaller bridge... Read The Bridge on the Drina Summary
Julie Otsuka is a Japanese American writer who was born in 1962 in Palo Alto, California. Both The Buddha in the Attic (2011) and her 2002 novel, When the Emperor was Divine, portray the Japanese American experience of internment camps following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The subject is close to Otsuka’s heart; the FBI arrested her grandfather on suspicion of being an enemy spy, while her mother, uncle, and grandmother were... Read The Buddha in the Attic Summary
The Buddha of Suburbia, by Hanif Kureishi, is a coming-of-age novel that explores significant themes of identity, class, and race in 1970s London. Karim Amir, the protagonist and narrator, tells the story of his maturation against a backdrop of political and social change, as he attempts to create himself, discover his place in life, and grow up. Told in the first person, Karim narrates his life from age 17 to about age 23.The Buddha of... Read The Buddha of Suburbia Summary
The Cellist of Sarajevo focuses on the struggles of four people during the long and brutal Siege of Sarajevo. For the citizens of Sarajevo at this time, life is torturous. There are snipers in the hills encircling the city with their guns trained on the people below. These snipers, who the characters refer to as “the men in the hills,” are picking off the townspeople one by one whenever they venture outside for food or... Read The Cellist of Sarajevo Summary
The Chaperone is a work of historical fiction written by American author Laura Moriarty and published in 2012. The novel portrays the Jazz Age of the 1920s in America through a feminine lens. It was inspired by historical people and events, primarily the 1920s silent-film actress Louise Brooks. Moriarty lives in Lawrence, Kansas, and the book is also partially set in Kansas. The Chaperone was adapted into a PBS Masterpiece feature film in 2018. This... Read The Chaperone Summary
Marie-Henri Beyle, writing under his penname Stendhal, published his last complete work, the novel The Charterhouse of Parma, in French in 1839. It tells the story of an Italian nobleman who fights in the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and then navigates the fraught political dynamics of the era known as the Italian Restoration (1814-1848). This was a time when the memory of revolution was repressed and power seemed to many to operate on caprice and intrigue... Read The Charterhouse of Parma Summary
The Coffee Trader is a 2003 historical novel by American author David Liss. Set in Amsterdam in 1659, the story centers around Miguel Lienzo, a Portuguese Jewish merchant, and his foray into the trade of coffee, a new commodity on the market. The story surveys the everyday dealings at the Amsterdam Exchange at the middle of the 17th century and provides perspective on the various cultures (Dutch, Portuguese) and religions (Christian, Jewish) practiced by the... Read The Coffee Trader Summary
The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron, is a work of historical fiction that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. The first-person account of the 1831 Virginia slave revolt begins and ends in the prison where Nat Turner, an African American slave, was held before, during, and following his trial. Turner awaits execution as the leader of the two-day slave rebellion that started in Southampton County and ended with the death of approximately 55... Read The Confessions of Nat Turner Summary
The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton is a tragicomedy of manners that explores themes of greed, ruthless ambition, progress, and gendered ideas. Wharton, who was herself a member of the New York City elite, was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, and her novels are pieces of classic American literature for their social commentary, multilayered characters, and analysis of American culture.Published in 1913, this novel can be read as... Read The Custom of the Country Summary
The Dutch House is the eighth novel of Ann Patchett, an award-winning author of contemporary fiction. Published in 2019, the novel tells the story of what happens to Danny Conroy and his older sister Maeve Conroy when their stepmother, Andrea Smith, expels them from their sumptuous childhood home after the death of their father, Cyril Conroy. Set in the Dutch House—located in the outskirts of Philadelphia—and New York, the novel is literary fiction with fairy-tale... Read The Dutch House Summary
The Enchantress of Florence is a 2008 magical-realist novel by Salman Rushdie. The story incorporates many fantastical, folkloric elements as it portrays life in the Mughal Empire and Renaissance Florence in the 16th century. In the novel, a mysterious European man arrives in the Mughal court with a story which can only be told to the emperor. Rushdie described the novel as his most heavily researched work and The Enchantress of Florence was praised by... Read The Enchantress Of Florence Summary
The Essex Serpent is a novel by Sarah Perry, released in 2016. Set in 1893, it tells the story of Cora Seaborne, a recently widowed woman with a burning interest in the natural sciences. Escaping London, she visits a small village in the Essex countryside. There, she finds a population in thrall to the local legend of a sea monster lurking in the nearby estuary and a village priest who is desperately trying to dissuade... Read The Essex Serpent Summary
The Farming of Bones, by Edwidge Danticat, was originally published in 1998. The novel’s setting is the Dominican Republic and the surplus of the book takes place in the late 1930s. Amabelle Désir, orphan and servant to Señora Valencia and her father, Papi, finds herself going above and beyond the call of duty as she delivers Señora Valencia’s twin babies. When the doctor arrives, he comments on Amabelle’s stellar abilities as a midwife, and suggests... Read The Farming Of Bones Summary
The Feast of the Goat, written by Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, is a work of historical fiction originally published in Spanish in 2000 and translated into English by Edith Grossman in 2001. The novel chronicles the final days of Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship over the Dominican Republic from three points of view: through the eyes of his assassins in 1961, from the time they wait to ambush him until their final moments; through Trujillo’s... Read The Feast of the Goat Summary
The German Girl is a historical novel written by Cuban journalist and editor Armando Lucas Correa. It interweaves the stories of Anna Rosen, a 12-year-old girl living in New York in 2014, and Hannah Rosenthal, her great aunt, whose journey begins as a 12-year-old Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Berlin in 1939. Anna’s story revolves around a trip to Cuba to visit her great aunt Hannah, while Hannah’s story primarily centers around her journey onboard... Read The German Girl Summary
The Giver of Stars (2019) by JoJo Moyes is a work of women’s fiction that can also be categorized as historical fiction. Not long after its publication, The Giver of Stars became embroiled in controversy when another author, Kim Michele Richardson, noted similarities between her book about the WPA Pack Horse Librarians, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, and Moyes’s novel. Moyes is the bestselling author of Me Before You, and The Giver of Stars... Read The Giver of Stars Summary
Originally published in 2000, The Glass Palace is Amitav Ghosh’s fourth novel and tells the story of a family across three generations. It is set in Burma, Malaya, and India during a turbulent period in the region’s history. The book opens in 1885. In Mandalay, Burma, the British army begins to descend on the city and dethrone the royal family. An 11-year-old boy named Rajkumar is the only one who recognizes the thundering sound of... Read The Glass Palace Summary
A measure of the quality, prescience, and veracity of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth is that, nearly a century after its first publication, the book remains required reading in literature, world history, and social science courses. The novel is a simple, straightforward narrative about 50 years in the life of Wang Lung, an uneducated farmer in eastern China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While this era period was one of continual... Read The Good Earth Summary
The Good Lord Bird is a 2013 novel written by James McBride. It is set during three years of the slave era South and is a work of progressive Americana in the vein of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Good Lord Bird received the National Book Award and great critical acclaim, and is now being adapted into a television series for Showtime. It examines themes of slavery, loyalty, racism, and violent protest... Read The Good Lord Bird Summary
The Henna Artist (2020) is a novel by Indian American author Alka Joshi and the first book in The Jaipur Trilogy. The story takes place in 1950s India and follows 17-year-old Lakshmi as she escapes an abusive marriage and moves to Jaipur to become a henna artist. The protagonist is based on the author’s mother, who was not able to choose her own path in life but was determined that her children would have that... Read The Henna Artist Summary
The House Behind the Cedars revolves around the fates of two siblings, John and Rena. As a girl, their mother, Molly Walden, is picked out by a wealthy white man in the town of Patesville on account of her unusual beauty (Molly is African American with light skin and stereotypically white features). This unnamed man takes Molly as his concubine, installs her in the titular house behind the cedars, and fathers John and Rena.When John... Read The House Behind the Cedars Summary
Set in New York’s high society at the turn of the 20th century, The House of Mirth (1905), was the second novel by renowned American writer Edith Wharton. Wharton drew upon her own privileged upbringing in a wealthy, long-established New York family for her astute observations of this social milieu during the Gilded Age, a period marked by economic disparities and ostentatious materialism. Prior to the novel’s publication in October 1905, The House of Mirth... Read The House of Mirth Summary
The House of the Seven Gables (1851) is a novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. With the eponymous New England mansion serving as the novel’s centerpiece, the story charts the fortunes and misfortunes of the Pyncheon family as they navigate the haunting legacy of their family’s violent past. The novel explores the themes The Influence of the Past on the Present, The Complications of Home, and The Legacy of Violence. Like Hawthorne’s earlier novel, The... Read The House of the Seven Gables Summary
The Huntress is a historical fiction novel published in 2019 by the American author Kate Quinn. Set in the years before, during, and after World War II, the novel weaves together the stories of three central characters: a Russian pilot in the Soviet Red Army’s all-female bomber unit; an American photographer whose father falls in love with a mysterious Austrian woman; and an English war correspondent committed to exposing Nazi war criminals. According to Washington... Read The Huntress Summary
A historical novel, The Invention of Wings (2014), by Sue Monk Kidd, traces the intersecting lives of the abolitionist sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, and Sarah’s slave, Hetty Handful Grimké. Spanning 35 years and set primarily in Charleston, South Carolina in the 1800s, the novel begins on Sarah’s 11th birthday, when Handful is given to her as a birthday present. It ends when Sarah helps Handful and her sister, Sky, escape slavery, and Sarah fulfills... Read The Invention of Wings Summary
Zora Neale Hurston, a writer and anthropologist associated with the Harlem Renaissance, published her second and most famous novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937. Set in Central and South Florida, the novel follows protagonist Janie Crawford’s evolution from impressionable, idealistic girl to self-confident woman.Famed for her work as an ethnographer and an author, Hurston chronicled contemporary issues in the Black community with honesty. While somewhat unrecognized in her time, Hurston’s writing came to... Read Their Eyes Were Watching God Summary
The Island of Sea Woman (March 2019) is the most recent title by New York Times bestselling author Lisa See. It is classified in the categories of Historical Asian Fiction and Asian American Literature. Many of See’s books discuss the Chinese immigrant experience in America; her paternal great-grandfather was Chinese, and this family history has had a great influence on her historical fiction. See’s books have been published in 39 languages, and she has been... Read The Island of Sea Women Summary
The Jade Peony is a 1995 novel by Wayson Choy. The book is divided into three parts, each with a distinct narrator. Each narrator is a child belonging to a Chinese-Canadian family; the novel is set during the escalation of World War II. The book follows each of these characters in a fully developed plot arc. Together, the parts form a tapestry that provides the reader with an incisive and insightful emotional, historical, and sociological... Read The Jade Peony Summary
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar (2003) is a historical fiction novel detailing the fate of the Romanovs by Robert Alexander (a pen name for Robert Zimmerman). Although Alexander is American, he spent decades in Russia. He attended Leningrad State University and, afterward, ran various businesses in St. Petersburg. As such, he has personal experience with Russian culture. He wrote several historical fiction novels that take place during the Russian Revolution—including Rasputin’s... Read The Kitchen Boy Summary
Kathleen Grissom’s 2010 novel, The Kitchen House, is a work of historical fiction that centers on the happenings at Captain James Pyke’s southern Virginia tobacco plantation, Tall Oaks, beginning in 1791. The two narrative threads follow Lavinia, a seven-year-old Irish orphan working at Tall Oaks as an indentured servant, and Belle, the beautiful young daughter of James and his slave. The novel is told from the first-person perspectives of Belle and Lavinia alternately over 55... Read The Kitchen House Summary
Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel, The Kite Runner, was published in 2003, two years after the events of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the US invasion of Afghanistan. Hosseini, the son of a diplomat for the Afghan Foreign Ministry, was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and relocated to France as a child. When Afghanistan was thrown into turmoil by the Soviet occupation at the height of the Cold... Read The Kite Runner Summary
Edward P. Jones’s novel The Known World, published in 2003 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2004), tells the interconnected stories of the people living at the antebellum Virginia plantation of Henry Townsend, a black slaveowner. The novel begins on the night of Henry’s death in 1855, but the story is not linear. The narrative seamlessly moves both backward in time to provide context for characters and forward in time to reveal characters’... Read The Known World Summary
The Last Days of Night is a novel of historical fiction by Graham Moore, published in 2016. The story follows a young lawyer in New York City in 1888, as he attempts to discern who invented the light bulb: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, or Nikola Tesla. The Washington Post named The Last Days of Night one of the best books of 2016.Plot SummaryIt is 1888 on the island of Manhattan, and electric light is a... Read The Last Days of Night Summary
The Last Kingdom, published in 2004, was the first volume in what would become a series of 12 historical adventure novels, set in Britain in the late-ninth and early 10th centuries. The novels chronicle the bloody territorial wars between the English armies of the island’s then four kingdoms and the invading Danish armies, fierce Northern warriors known in contemporary pop culture as the Vikings. Bernard Cornwell was already an established and prolific writer of historical... Read The Last Kingdom Summary
In Part 1, thieves steal At the Edge of a Wood—assumed to be the only surviving work of 17th-century painter Sara de Vos—from the apartment of Martijn “Marty” de Groot during a fundraiser for orphans. Marty does not discover the theft until months later because the thieves replace the original painting with a forgery created by Eleanor “Ellie” Shipley, an Australian doctoral student studying art history at Columbia University. Smith tells the story of how... Read The Last Painting of Sara De Vos Summary
The Light Between Oceans is Australian writer M.L. Stedman’s debut novel, published in 2012 by Random House Australia. Categorized as historical fiction, the novel won various accolades, such as the Indie Book Awards Book of the Year in 2013. A film adaptation of The Light Between Oceans was released four years after the novel’s publication in 2016. All citations in this guide are based on the 2012 Scribner edition, accessed via Scribd.com.Plot SummaryIn 1918, after... Read The Light Between Oceans Summary
In 2013’s The Longest Ride, Nicholas Sparks, one of the most prolific and successful American romance novelists of the millennium, investigates how despite their differences, opposite personalities can find their way to commitment. In juxtaposing two relationships, one ending after more than 50 years and the other just beginning, this #1 New York Times bestselling novel explores how love can flourish, endure, and sustain even through the most difficult times. The novel is part Western... Read The Longest Ride Summary
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri is the tale of two brothers, Subhash and Udayan Mitra. Born and raised in a suburb of Calcutta, they are inseparable as children, but when they start at the university, their lives take a sudden turn from one another. Subhash is more reserved and obedient, whereas Udayan is more mischievous and impulsive.Udayan is not afraid to break the rules or contradict authority and becomes a member of the Naxalites—a radical... Read The Lowland Summary
Mitch Albom’s 2015 novel, The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, blends magical realism with historical fiction to create a genre-bending work that is accessible for a wide range of audiences; however, given the complex themes of love, loss, regret, and redemption, the novel is best suited for a young adult audience and older.A personification of music, “Music,” narrates much of the novel. The novel starts at Frankie’s funeral and is interspersed with anecdotes from famous... Read The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto Summary
Among the most widely read and translated of all French authors, Alexandre Dumas lived and worked in the 19th century. A playwright, journalist, and travel writer, Dumas is likely best known for his historical fiction, much of which was initially published in serialized form. Along with The Count of Monte Cristo, his most enduring works are the three books that make up his D’Artagnan Romances: The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de... Read The Man In The Iron Mask Summary
Alice Hoffman’s 2015 novel, The Marriage of Opposites, is a work of historical fiction with magical realism and romance elements. The novel begins in the early 1800s and spans three generations of a Jewish family living on the island of St. Thomas after having fled the Inquisition in Europe. The novel follows a linear timeline and, told from different perspectives, creates a sweeping look at a historically significant moment in time. Hoffman based her tale... Read The Marriage Of Opposites Summary
Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition is a 1901 historical novel based on the events of an 1898 white supremacist riot in Wilmington, North Carolina. Chesnutt’s novel takes place in the fictional town of Wellington and focuses on the intertwined fates of two couples: Major and Mrs. Olivia Carteret, and Dr. William and Mrs. Janet Miller. Olivia and Janet are half-sisters; while they share the same white father, Samuel Merkell, Janet’s mother was a... Read The Marrow of Tradition Summary
The story begins with the collection of Merry Mounters celebrating a wedding between Edith and Edgar on Midsummer Eve. The group decorates the Maypole with flowers “so fresh and dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine tree” (Paragraph 3). The people all hold hands around the Maypole, dressed in animal headdresses like wolves and stags, except for one person who is clothed entirely in a bear suit. A few other... Read The Maypole Of Merry Mount Summary
The Moor’s Account (2014) is a fictionalized memoir of the first African explorer in the new world. Very little is known about him beyond the fact that he was one of only four survivors of the ill-fated Narváez expedition. In this historical novel, which cleverly employs flashbacks and first-person narration, author Laila Lalami imagines Mustafa telling his own story of endurance and survival.Mustafa was born in North Africa in the early 16th century. Despite his... Read The Moor's Account Summary
The year is 1327. William of Baskerville, a Franciscan friar, and Adso of Melk, a young novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a wealthy Benedictine abbey somewhere in Italy on an important secret mission. A group of Franciscans has come under fire from Pope John XXII, who suspects them of heresy. The Holy Roman Emperor, Louis IV, has aligned himself with the Franciscans, and the abbey has been chosen as a neutral location for... Read The Name of the Rose Summary
Richard Flanagan’s 2014 novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North won the Man Booker Prize for fiction. It is an examination of the consequences of war, regret, loneliness, adultery, and love. The book unfolds through brief chapters that span five parts and multiple decades. The experiences of the men in the WWII Japanese POW camp mirror those of Richard Flanagan’s father, who was himself a prisoner of war. Although the novel has many characters—even... Read The Narrow Road to the Deep North Summary
The Nightingale is a bestselling historical fiction novel written by Kristin Hannah and published in 2015. The story, which takes places in France during World War II, was inspired by the life and memoirs of Andrée de Jongh, a Belgian woman who survived the war and organized the Comet Line, an underground effort that allowed countless downed Allied pilots to escape Nazi capture and make their way to safety. Exploring themes such as family loyalty... Read The Nightingale Summary
The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo was published in 2020. Like Choo's debut novel, The Ghost Bride (2013), The Night Tiger is a mixture of genres, including mythology and historical fiction, and it is a New York Times bestseller. The Night Tiger chronicles the period between May and July of 1931. The setting is colonial-era Malaysia, or “Malaya.”Plot SummaryChinese house servant Ren, is a 10-year-old orphan who’s mourning the death of his master, Dr. MacFarlane... Read The Night Tiger Summary
Marie Benedict’s work of historical fiction, The Only Woman in the Room, tells the life story of Hedy Lamarr, a famed actress of the 1930s and 1940s. The 2019 novel rewrites Lamarr’s legacy by focusing on her path towards inventing a frequency-hopping radio technology that anticipates wi-fi. Benedict uses the political machinations of WWII and Hedy’s experiences to explore performativity, guilt, and sexism.Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain instances and discussions of... Read The Only Woman in the Room Summary
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s 2008 novel, The Palace of Illusions, is a retelling of the ancient Hindu epic The Mahabharata. The novel is narrated from the point of view of Panchaali, a princess who is born from fire. Her brother, Dhri, is born this way as well. They inhabit a world where divine beings and magic are commonplace. Panchaali grows up in the palace of her father, King Drupad, who wants to seek revenge on his... Read The Palace of Illusions Summary
Queen Elizabeth I enacted laws that persecuted Catholics in England; in response, some daring inventors created secret hiding places within Catholic homes to hide the priests from raids. In the 2013 novel, The Paris Architect, Charles Belfour transposes this real historical event into a new context: hiding Jewish people from German forces in Occupied France. The story centers on an architect in Paris who undertakes the dangerous work of designing invisible hiding places, makes new... Read The Paris Architect Summary
British author Jeannette Winterson reimagines events from Napoleon Bonaparte’s reign in her 1987 novel The Passion. The novel is a work of historical metafiction that follows Henri, a young French soldier, and Villanelle, a vivacious Venetian, as they navigate war and love in early 19th-century Europe.The Passion begins in Henri’s voice; he’s a young, bright-eyed soldier in Napoleon’s army who dreamed of being a drummer but is assigned to cook instead. After coming to the... Read The Passion Summary
Welsh historical-novelist Sarah Waters’s sixth novel, The Paying Guests (2014), tells the tale of a mother and daughter in 1920s London who must take on lodgers to afford their house. The result of taking on these paying guests is a devastating love affair and a terrible crime. The novel was nominated for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, became a New York Times Best Seller, and was ranked as the best book of 2014 by... Read The Paying Guests Summary
Welsh writer Ken Follett begins his novel The Pillars of the Earth (1989) with the sinking of the White Ship in 1120 and ends it with the murder of Thomas Beckett in 1170. This is the first book in the Kingsbridge series, followed by World Without End (2007) and A Column of Fire (2017). Follett later released the prequel, The Evening and the Morning, in 2020.The White Ship sinking in the English Channel resulted in... Read The Pillars of the Earth Summary
Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory (originally published in 1940) recounts the tragic story of the whisky priest. His religion has been outlawed, his faith shattered, and his history—like his name—all but erased. He’s relentlessly pursued by the lieutenant, whose secular beliefs are as passionate as others’ spiritual beliefs. The priest’s mere presence endangers those he once served, and he constantly struggles to fulfill his duty to bring comfort and absolution to others at... Read The Power and the Glory Summary
Madame de Lafayette published The Princesse de Clèves anonymously in 1678. She was acquainted with the manners of Louis XIV’s court, and she drew upon her court experiences when writing the book, adding to the book’s historical fidelity. It was a great success upon its publication. As Robin Buss (whose Penguin Classics translation provides the source for this summary) writes in her Chronology of Mme de Lafayette’s life, The Princess de Clèves started fierce speculation... Read The Princesse de Clèves (The Princess of Cleves) Summary
The Red Tent (1997) is an adult historical novel by Jewish American author Anita Diamant. It describes the life of Dinah, daughter of Jacob, who appears in the biblical Book of Genesis. While her mention in the Bible only concerns her abduction by a Canaanite man and her brothers’ act of atrocity in response, Diamant imagines a full life for Dinah—including a childhood raised by several mothers, her first marriage, and life in Egypt, where... Read The Red Tent Summary
In the 2018 novel by Arapahoe and Cheyenne author Tommy Orange, There There, 12 characters collectively recount the events leading up to a shooting at the Big Oakland Powwow. Throughout the novel, each character reflects on their relationship with Indigenous identity and connection to Oakland, California. Underneath the larger story about the powwow is a narrative thread that binds several of the characters together through family lineage. Plot SummaryThe novel begins with an essay in... Read There There Summary
The Samurai’s Garden tells the story of Stephen Chan, a 20-year-old Chinese painter, writer, and student who, at the urging of his upper-middle-class parents, leaves school in Canton to spend a year recuperating from an undisclosed illness at his family’s beach house in Tarumi, Japan. The narrative present of the novel is set during the first year of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).The novel is character-driven. Stephen’s traditional Chinese mother lives at the family home... Read The Samurai's Garden Summary
Published in 1905, The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Emma Orczy, is a historical romance adventure novel about a wealthy English baronet with a secret life as a hero who rescues the innocent from the French Reign of Terror. Told mainly from the viewpoint of his wife, the book—based on the successful London play of the same name—birthed a series of Scarlet Pimpernel novels, movies, and TV productions. It ushered in the secret-identity genre of adventure... Read The Scarlet Pimpernel Summary
The Septembers of Shiraz (2007), a novel by Iranian writer Dalia Sofer, recounts the experiences of the Amins, an Iranian Jewish family, during the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s. The book is closely based on Sofer’s family history: When Sofer was 10, her family fled Iran, crossing the border to Turkey with the help of smugglers. The Septembers of Shiraz depicts the changing atmosphere and events that characterize the treatment of the wealthy class... Read The Septembers Of Shiraz Summary
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2017) is a work of historical fiction by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The novel follows Monique, a journalist struggling to make a name for herself until she receives an offer to interview the mysterious and reclusive 1960s Hollywood starlet, Evelyn Hugo, about fame, scandal, and love. The novel is a study of human nature that explores The Cost of Fame, The Oversexualization and Commodification of Women’s Bodies, and the difficulty... Read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Summary
Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl is actually two separate (though interrelated) narratives: a short story set during the Holocaust, and a novella set roughly 40 years later in Miami, Florida. In the short story, also titled “The Shawl,” a young Jewish woman named Rosa Lublin is sent with her niece Stella and her infant daughter Magda to a concentration camp. Against all odds, Magda survives much longer than her mother expects, thanks largely to the shawl... Read The Shawl Summary
IntroductionPublished in 1987, The Shell Seekers was written by Rosamunde Pilcher and is her first bestseller. Inspired by Pilcher’s conversation with Tom Dunne at St. Martin’s Press about her children’s desire to see their mother become famous, the novel is the author’s attempt to create a story for women based on the experiences of her generation. Set in 1984, it tells the story of Penelope Stern Keeling and her children (Nancy, Olivia, and Noel) and... Read The Shell Seekers Summary
The Sisters Brothers is a 2011 novel by Canadian writer Patrick DeWitt. Set in 1851, it traces the journey of Charlie and Eli Sisters, two hired killers traveling from Oregon to San Francisco to find a man called Warm, who allegedly stole something from their boss, the Commodore. The darkly comic Western is in the picaresque genre, as the brothers’ episodic misadventures explore different communities populating the American West.The Sisters Brothers is divided into 64... Read The Sisters Brothers Summary
The Smell of Apples, the first novel by South African writer Mark Behr, was originally published in 1993 in Afrikaner, before being published in English translation in 1995 to international acclaim. It won numerous prestigious literary prizes, most notably the M-Net Literary Award for best South African novel; the Betty Trask Award for best first novel published in the British Commonwealth; and the Art Seidenbaum Award for best English-language first novel, presented by The Los... Read The Smell of Apples Summary
The Song of Achilles, author Madeline Miller’s bestselling novel, retells the events of Homer’s Iliad. Published in 2012, the book reimagines the relationship between ancient Greek Trojan war heroes Achilles and Patroclus. Narrated in the first person by Patroclus, the narrative explores themes central to ancient Greek mythology, notably the immutability of fate and the pursuit of glory.The novel begins with Patroclus narrating his birth and early childhood. Son of King Menoitius, the undersized and... Read The Song of Achilles Summary
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a 1963 novel by John le Carré, the pen name of the English author David Cornwell (1931-2020). Le Carré worked for British Intelligence, including a brief period as a secret agent in Germany. He also began writing novels during this time, and chose a pseudonym to preserve his cover. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, his third novel, achieved widespread popularity, allowing Le Carré... Read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold Summary
The Story of a New Name is the sequel to My Brilliant Friend, the first book in Italian writer Elena Ferrante’s world-acclaimed quartet of Neapolitan novels. The second book in the quartet continues to document the friendship between Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo and opens in 1966 when first-person narrator Elena, burdened by the contents of the notebooks that Lila has entrusted to her, throws all of them into the river Arno in Pisa (where... Read The Story of a New Name Summary
The Three Musketeers (1844), by French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas, is a novel that borrows tropes from the swashbuckling genre, historical fiction, and romance to recount the adventures of a group of king’s guard who face off against the machinations of nefarious political factions set on destabilizing the monarchy. It was first published through serialization in 1844 to great popularity. Though set in the mid-1600s, the novel connected with the philosophical underpinnings of the... Read The Three Musketeers Summary
The Tin Drum is a 1959 novel by German author Gunther Grass. In the novel, a man named Oskar tells the story of his life, particularly focusing on his experiences during World War II. The novel employs satire, absurdism, magical realism, and allegory to wrestle with the pain and trauma of life under Nazi rule. The Tin Drum was adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 1979 and has been hailed as a landmark in literary... Read The Tin Drum Summary
Louise Murphy’s The True Story of Hansel and Gretel is a work of historical fiction originally published in 2003. Loosely based upon the classic fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, the novel reimagines Hansel and Gretel’s story as a World War II narrative. The San Francisco Chronicle selected it as a “Best Book of the Year,” and it received a starred review from Kirkus. This guide references the 2003 paperback edition.Plot SummaryIt is the winter... Read The True Story of Hansel and Gretel Summary
In the follow-up to his award-winning novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, American writer Anthony Marra released The Tsar of Love and Techno (2015), a collection of interconnected short stories. Shifting from first to third person narration across various characters’ perspectives in different time periods, The stories begin in Communist Russia in the 1930s and end in modern Russia the 2010s, connecting the characters to their descendants and ancestors. Marra weaves together a tapestry whose common... Read The Tsar of Love and Techno Summary
Ayana Mathis’s 2012 novel The Twelve Tribes of Hattie follows the lives of the Shepherds, a black family struggling to succeed in Philadelphia between 1925 and 1980. At the center of the family is their inscrutable matriarch, Hattie, who remains an enigma to her children even as they grow into adulthood. With only two exceptions, each of the book’s chapters delves into the mind of one of Hattie’s children (and one granddaughter) over a span... Read The Twelve Tribes of Hattie Summary
The Underground Railroad, a 2016 historical fiction novel by Colson Whitehead, takes place in the early 19th century in Georgia and chronicles the life of protagonist Cora, Ajarry’s grandchild. Interspersed in the narrative are chapters that follow other characters in the same way the beginning of the book depicts Ajarry’s life. These diverse characters—including Cora’s mother Mabel, Caesar, Ethel Wells, and Ridgeway—have meaningful roles in Cora’s story.The most prominent theme in this book is that... Read The Underground Railroad Summary
The Valley of Amazement, a work of historical fiction first published in 2013, is the sixth novel by author Amy Tan. This guide refers to the Kindle Edition for citations. Tan primarily writes about the complexity of the mother-daughter bond and about the experience of being Chinese American. In The Valley of Amazement, a mother and daughter recount their lives in early-20th-century Shanghai and San Francisco.Tan’s debut novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989), became a... Read The Valley of Amazement Summary
Maggie O’Farrell’s novel The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, published in 2006, is the author’s fourth novel and tackles the grim history of forced incarcerations of women and the devastating effects of family secrets. O’Farrell’s work often focuses on women trapped physically, emotionally, and psychologically by forces over which they have no control, and this novel is no exception. Through a twisted entanglement of three different perspectives, O’Farrell tells the story of not only Esme... Read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Summary
The Vanishing Half, published in June 2020, is the second novel by author Brit Bennett. It became a New York Times bestseller and was selected as a Good Morning America Book Club Pick. The novel explores the themes of female family bonds and the Black experience in America. Bennett covered similar material in her debut novel, The Mothers (2016), which also became a New York Times bestseller. HBO has purchased the film rights to The... Read The Vanishing Half Summary
Charles Waddell Chesnutt’s short story, “The Wife of His Youth,” is available online at the National Humanities Center’s America in Class: The Making of African American Identity, Volume II: 1865-1917: Identity project. It was originally published in The Atlantic in July 1898 (Chesnutt was the first African American to publish in the highly-respected monthly). Narrated in three parts by a limited, omniscient narrator, the story recounts the reunion of a couple separated by slavery.Part 1... Read The Wife Of His Youth Summary
Pramoedya Ananta Toer—a famous Indonesian editor, essayist, and social activist—wrote This Earth of Mankind (1980)—the first book of his series The Buru Quartet—while imprisoned in the Buru Concentration Camp following a military coup that overthrew Sukarno, the first democratically elected president of Indonesia. Incarcerated for 14 years and prevented from having writing material, Toer memorized the books of his series and recited them to his fellow inmates each day until his release in 1979. The... Read This Earth of Mankind Summary
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014) is the third book in pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante’s world-acclaimed adult fiction series The Neapolitan Novels. The four-novel series chronicles the friendship between first-person narrator Elena Greco and Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo from childhood to old age in an impoverished neighborhood in Naples, Italy. Translated by Ann Goldstein, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay documents the beginning of middle age, wherein the two women grapple with... Read Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay Summary
Through Black Spruce, published in 2008, is Canadian author Joseph Boyden’s second novel. His first, Three Day Road (2005), is a work of historical fiction based on the life of Xavier Bird. Through Black Spruce focuses on Xavier’s son, Will Bird, and his granddaughter, Annie Bird. Boyden uses storytelling as a narrative framework to share the Bird family’s story. Annie and Will narrate alternating chapters, telling stories about their past year as the reader also... Read Through Black Spruce Summary
To Live (1992) by novelist Yu Hua traces the struggles of Fugui and his family. Told as a story within a story, an unknown narrator encounters Fugui, who proceeds to tell the story of his life. Instead of traditional chapters, the novel is broken into sections based off whether or not it’s the narrator talking or Fugui. The narrator’s sections are italicized and much shorter than Fugui’s longer, non-italicized sections. Spanning over four decades of... Read To Live Summary
Tracks, by Louise Erdrich, appeared as the third in a tetralogy of works beginning with Love Medicine, continuing with The Beet Queen, and ending with The Bingo Palace. All of these novels center on the history of the Chippewa or Ojibwe tribe located in and around the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota. In Tracks, Erdrich reaches back into the early twentieth century to retell the great losses the Chippewa tribe experienced. When disease and... Read Tracks Summary
Train to Pakistan is a 1956 historical novel by Indian novelist Khushwant Singh. Set during the 1947 partition of India that created the nations of Pakistan and India, it focuses on the way partition impacted the people on the ground. Focusing on the lives of ordinary citizens as they were torn from their homes, Train to Pakistan brings a human dimension to one of the bloodiest periods in the history of the two countries. Before the... Read Train to Pakistan Summary
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry is a modernist novel published in 1947. Set in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, in 1938, it follows the Consul, a former British diplomat with an alcohol addiction, on the day of his death. In addition to the Consul, the small cast of characters includes the Consul’s half-brother, Hugh, his ex-wife, Yvonne, and his friend-turned-enemy, Jacques Laruelle. Malcolm Lowry, who spent time in Mexico and was known to have experienced addiction himself... Read Under the Volcano Summary
... Read V. Summary
War and Peace is a Russian historical fiction novel written by Leo Tolstoy, published in 1865-1869. The story charts the alliances and wars between Russia and France at the beginning of the 19th century, following the lives of characters swept along by historical events. War and Peace is heralded as one of the most important novels in Russian and world literature and has been adapted into films, television shows, and more.Multiply nominated for both the... Read War and Peace Summary
Set in the 1830s and beginning on a slave plantation in Barbados, Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black tells the story of the eponymous Washington and his unlikely adventures as he meditates upon the complexities of race, relationships, science, and art. In 1830, Wash is an uneducated, orphaned slave boy around 10 or 11 years old taken under the wing of Big Kit, a powerful and intimidating field slave. Big Kit protects him from the other slaves... Read Washington Black Summary
Waterland, Graham Swift’s sweeping 1983 novel, has a strong sense of regionalism as reflected in its title. This British publication set in a low-lying region of eastern England reads like American gothic fiction, with flawed characters; themes of grotesque, fatalism, and madness; and occasional levity to break the intensity. The main plot chronicles the plights of two intrinsically intertwined but decidedly dissimilar families. Swift’s complex, intriguing characters struggle to navigate their problematic pasts and the... Read Waterland Summary
We Were the Lucky Ones, written by Georgia Hunter and published in 2017, is a historical novel based on the actual experiences of the author’s family during World War II. Hunter’s grandfather, Addy Kurc, came from a family of Jews in Radom, Poland. The book follows the story of Addy, his parents Nechuma and Sol, and his siblings Genek, Mila, Jakob, and Halina, along with their spouses, as they struggle to survive the Holocaust and... Read We Were the Lucky Ones Summary
What Is the What is a 2006 novel by Dave Eggers. The story follows Valentino Achak Deng, one of tens of thousands of boys displaced and/or orphaned during the Second Sudanese War, which spanned nearly two decades, from 1987 to 2005. While a novel, What Is the What has been called by Eggers a “fictionalized autobiography.” As Deng explains in his introduction to the text, they decided that it should be considered a novel, because... Read What Is The What Summary
When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433 is a nonfiction book published in 1994 by Louise Levathes. In a narrative that predates the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Levathes examines a three-decade period in the early 15th century when China launched seven major sea voyages. Levathes holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and worked for ten years as a staff writer for National Geographic. In 1990, she... Read When China Ruled the Seas Summary
Japanese-American author Julie Otsuka’s historical fiction novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, was published in 2002. It is a short book, falling at the boundary between a novel and a novella, chronicling the experience of one Japanese family at an internment camp during World War II. The book is broken into five uneven sections: “Evacuation Order No. 19,” “Train,” “When the Emperor Was Divine,” “In a Stranger’s Backyard,” and “Confession.” The first three sections are... Read When the Emperor Was Divine Summary
Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Jean Rhys’s best-known novel, contemplates the life of Bertha Mason Rochester, a minor character in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847). Rhys made a career out of writing novels and short stories that contemplated the lives of unconventional women. She wrote and published most of her fiction in the 1930s, then went out of print for several decades. The rise of feminist and postcolonial literary studies brought a renewed interest in... Read Wide Sargasso Sea Summary
Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is the first in a trilogy of historical novels depicting life in the court of King Henry VIII. The story takes place in England during the tumultuous 1520s, and is told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, one of the king’s most trusted advisors. Mantel conducted extensive research to ensure historical authenticity and continuity, providing a rich account of the events leading up to the beginning of the English Reformation. Wolf... Read Wolf Hall Summary
Miriam Toews’s Women Talking (2018) is a novel set in the fictional Mennonite colony of Molotschna. It follows a group of the colony’s women as they discuss how to respond to the discovery that many of their menfolk have been anesthetizing and raping them for years. The book is inspired by actual events that took place between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia. There, eight men were discovered to have been... Read Women Talking Summary
Year of Wonders (2001) is a historical fiction novel by Geraldine Brooks, tracing the 1666 outbreak of the bubonic plague in the English town of Eyam. When the town’s zealous rector, Michael Mompellion, and the community submit to a voluntary quarantine, young widow Anna Frith serves with the rector and his wife Elinor to minister to the townsfolk as the plague wreaks havoc. Through the eyes of 18-year-old Anna, the novel explores what happens when... Read Year of Wonders Summary