Beyond the Tudors - 8 Historical Fiction Novels to Read
Maybe it’s me, but every time I look for new historical fiction novels, they seem to be overwhelmingly set in exactly two time periods, the Tudor era and World War II. Even when I actively look for lists of historical fiction lists online on different eras, those two time periods still creep in somehow. Now, there are some excellent books on the Tudor era and, of course, on World War II. Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are both excellent and deserve all the accolades they have garnered, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is one of my all-time favorite books.
But even if every single book about those two areas was incredible, it is such a small fraction of European history (or heck, just English history), let alone world history, and frankly, I’m bored of those two eras.
To counteract this trend, I’ve been seeking out and reading historical fiction that does not, even tangentially, deal with those eras for a few years now. And I’ve compiled a list of eight books I’ve read and enjoyed. This list is just a small sample, and, sadly, is still almost exclusively European History, but I’m working on expanding my own fiction reading to a more global sphere and therefore can share a more varied list in the future.
Please note, these books are all pure historical fiction – no magic or fantastical elements.
Possession by AS Byatt
I first encountered Possession by watching the movie with Gwyneth Paltrow many years before I read the novel, or even knew it was a novel. The story, a dual track of two people researching two fictional Romantic poets, and the story of those poets, is not just well constructed, but the author actually writes out the works of those fictional poets, and includes them within the noel when its appropriate to the story. Personally, I skimmed those bits, as I generally don’t like the prose or styles of that time period, but it is an impressive accomplishment and makes this a must read for anyone who likes Romantic-era English poetry.
Hild by Nicola Griffith
Hild is set in 7th century, very Saxon, Britain, and is a fictionalized account of a niece of one of the petty kings of the time. Hild provides a focus for just how brutal and well, dark, the early Middle Ages were in Britain. In it, women gain power, nominal as it is, through cloaking themselves in Christian mysticism, which gave their words weight it wouldn’t otherwise have. Honestly, the only thing I didn’t like about this was how confusing the Saxon names were.
The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan
The Twentieth Wife is the first of two novels about Nur Jahan, a woman who rose to be the power behind Emperor Jahangir and the de facto ruler of the Mughal Empire at its height in the early 1600s. Indian history has always fascinated me, and Nur Jahan not only was the power behind the throne, but she did it from within the palace haram (the Mughal Emperors were Muslim) and on her second marriage. All the palace intrigue and politicking a reader could want, from a fascinating and yet somehow so very familiar historical period.
The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss
The Colonial and Early Republic periods in American History are my favorite, possibly because those were my gateway to what became a life-long love of history. The Whiskey Rebels looks at, you guessed it, the Whiskey Rebellion which took place in the western Pennsylvania in the early 1790s. It provides a far more nuanced and sympathetic look at the rebellion than the one I remember from my history books, and shines a light on the growing pains of a newly born nation.
The Treasures of Montsegur by Sophy Burnham
I bought this book at random at Half-Price Books in Berkeley when I was in high school and I still really love it. It’s set in high medieval France, the early 13th century, but tells the fully relatable story of a woman’s life – love, jealousy, happiness, rejection - against the backdrop of the lives and destruction of the Cathars, a Gnostic, aesthetic Christian movement centered in the Languedoc region that were deemed heretics by the Catholic church. It’s both exactly the medieval France novel you expect, and completely unexpected at the same time.
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
This is a short novel set in 10th century Khazaria, following two Jewish men of fortune – one from France and the other from Ethiopia - and their adventures in the Caucuses. Never heard of Khazaria? Neither had I until I read this novel, but it was a real, albeit minor, medieval kingdom in the Caucuses that was ruled by a Jewish elite/royal family. A fun swashbuckling adventure with a very unexpected chunk of history. Stuff still happens in places that are blanks in history books.
The Accidental Empress by Allison Pataki
Empress Sisi’s story begins as a real-life fairy-tale. In the 1840s, Sisi was the daughter of a minor German prince when the Austrian Emperor, one of the most powerful rulers in Europe (for context, France is in a post-Revolution hangover and Germany isn’t a country yet) falls madly in love and marries her. But Sisi’s life was far from happily ever after. Between the Dowager Empress, the suffocations of court, and suffering from anorexia, it was more Brothers Grimm than Disney, but the novel, and its sequel, are both fascinating and beautiful looks at an indomitable empress and the turbulence of 19th century Eastern Europe.
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Las Mariposas, the Butterflies, was the nickname for the real life Mirabal sisters who opposed Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in the 1950s. Julia Alvarez’s novel is a fictional account of these women, three of whom were assassinated by Trujillo’s regime. A moving portrait of a country, a dictatorship enabled by the US, and the strength of the people, especially the women, who stood up against it. The 1950s are hardly history, but read this regardless as it is such a worthwhile and just good novel.
