The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntford
It covers the race to reach the south pole between Sir Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen. Huntford created scenes and dialogues based on the journal entries kept by all parties (and references said entries in footnotes throughout). It blurs the lines between historical fiction and annotated biography as the dialogues are largely imagined by the author but it is presented with such insight into the characters of the men based on their own thoughts and accounts that it is easy to forget that it was not penned by a party who was present at the time.
I highly recommend Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of historical naval fiction (beginning with Master and Commander, which was sort-of made into a movie starring Russel Crowe a few years back) for both superb writing and attention to historical accuracy. The series is comprised of twenty novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars and featuring characters in the British Royal Navy, primarily Captain Jack Aubrey and Doctor Stephen Maturin.
O'Brian did exhaustive research into the naval battles featured in many of the novels, such as the fictional Captain Jack Aubrey's capture of the Cacafuego in Master and Commander, which is based on Lord Cochrane's capture of the 32-gun Spanish xebec-frigate El Gamo in HMS Speedy (an under-manned 14-gun brig). The details of the action described by Cochrane in his dispatch (linked) are almost identical to the engagement in which O'Brian places Aubrey's sloop HMS Sophie.
To his credit, O'Brian himself frequently alludes to the historical context in the prefaces to his novels, and claims no credit for inventing those heroic actions that are based on real battles. In discussing the writing of his first novel of the sea, The Golden Ocean (based in Commodore George Anson's circumnavigation - a voyage that began in 1740), O'Brian describes his research processes and the pleasure of immersing himself in historical records (emphasis mine):
I was fortunate enough to have great material, and I wrote the book in about six weeks (or was it less?) laughing most of the time. In the first place there was the chaplain's excellent account, together with other contemporary sources; a mass of documents from the British Public Record Office; and the great wealth of the National Maritime Museum and its library at Greenwich. My own knowledge of the sea was useful too; but though I had sailed for many years and in many rigs, both fore-and-aft and square, my vessels were far removed from Anson's ships and it called for a great deal of research to get the technical details quite right—very agreeable research, too, in an atmosphere where I felt thoroughly at home, and in very good company: research that has, in the course of later years, led me through countless ship's logs, official correspondence, courts-martial, Admiralty orders, memoirs and letters written by sailors of all ranks from admiral of the fleet to ordinary seaman, and of course innumerable books dealing with naval history, ship-handling, ship-building, the health of seamen, and the fighting of battles at sea.
In my subsequent naval tales I have rarely had everything, character, plot and ending, handed to me on a salver; but I have often found a comfortable kernel of fact for my fiction: for example I borrowed Cochrane's taking of the immensely superior Cacafuego in Master and Commander, Linois's unsuccessful action against the Indiamen in HMS Surprise, and Captain Riou's collision with an iceberg in Desolation Island.
Indeed, anyone who reads extensively in the subjects I have mentioned will find a great many traces of my borrowing; nor shall I blush on being confronted with them, for I do not claim the merit of originality: only that of being a tolerably exact mirror, reflecting the ships and the seamen of an earlier age.
All this is not to say that his books contain no historical inaccuracies or artistic license; he is a novelist and his characters largely fictitious, though historical figures that would be contemporaries of his characters do play varying roles, or are alluded to within the novels. The most notable liberty taken with history is one of scale and time; the first few novels progress through history fairly rapidly, while the events of the latter novels are often compressed to fit within the timeline of relevant historical events.
EDIT to add: I limited the scope of this comment to the veracity of the naval battles upon which O'Brian based many of the actions in his novels, but his writing is often surprisingly accurate beyond the engagements between warships. His characters' dialects, the social mores of the period, the technical accuracy in describing the ships and rigging, the Royal Navy itself, and naval tactics of the time are all well-researched. Even the narrative prose of the novels is written to mimic the style and tone of the period. However, since that's harder to demonstrate with sources, I've chosen to leave those aspects to one side for now. I'm happy to answer questions or elaborate as best I can if others are interested, though.
(I've never commented here before but I love reading AH threads, so if this comment doesn't meet the requirements, my apologies. If a moderator finds issues here, I'd appreciate a comment to that effect so I can remedy the problem, rather than wholesale deletion, if that's feasible.)
This is the low-hanging fruit of this thread, but why not:
Hilary Mantel, discussing her "literary origins", had a striking remark about a scene from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (ETA: not the focus of this post) in an interview with the Guardian:
Everything I have done is somehow wrapped into that scene. I have been concerned with revolution, with persuasion, with rhetoric, with the point where a crowd turns into a mob; in a larger sense, with the moment when one thing turns into another, whether a ghost into a solid person or a riot into a revolution. Everything, it seems to me, is in this scene.
This is, fundamentally, the question on which scholarship of the English Reformation turns. How does a country go from its king ordering the works of Luther burned, to founding his own Church for purposes of divorce, to shutting monasteries, to burning Protestants and banning vernacular Bibles, to Catholicism, to increasingly Calvinist Protestantism? How to we go from a voice to a crowd to a mob, what is the driving force behind that?
So even when Mantel claims her research for Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and the forthcoming finale of her fictionalized biography of Thomas Cromwell is meager next to her knowledge of the French Revolution--she's already approaching not just the era but what drives it. That, to me, is a key reason why these books have worked so well.
Henry VIII's England is a rare era, I think, where modern pop culture consumers are most familiar with heavily fictionalized versions of real people instead of pop history (WWII/the History Channel) or fictional pastiche (the Middle Ages). And each new entry into the genre revises it some way, redeeming a protagonist out of an incredible cast and villainizing others. A Man for All Seasons gives us hagiography of Thomas More in film. Tudors managed to make some people believe in Henry+Anne=4ever.
Mantel takes up the man who hadn't had his shot at popular redemption, Cromwell. It's a fascinating new angle, since his story should be what we cling to: the rise from obscure origins to fortune and power, and a tragic fall at the hands of a capricious king. But while redemption is the goal and possibly the outcome, the process is messy. Mantel, through her characters, has to grapple with the big question: how religious was the early English Reformation? Were Cromwell and/or the Boleyns sincere evangelicals (=Protestant)?
Mantel did her place-space research, of course. She kept track of who was where, who was with whom, who was talking to whom. She's not interested in conflating characters because having two people named Mary would be too confusing. But that's almost beside the point. What makes Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies work is her self-consciousness as an interpreter of history as well as a novelist.
Of course I'm a historian, and my perspective on Tudor England/the English Reformation is shaped by reading history by other historians. Which raises the question: do I think these books are "realistic" because they reflect what I've read, instead of the era? And this is where, I think, Mantel's skill as a novelist comes in.
I tend towards caution in my own research--I stay closer to my sources. When I speak with questions in my answers on AH, they're not just rhetorical devices--it's because the sources are silent on what people did or why they did it, and I might have thoughts but I'm too nervous to assert them for sure. To write good novels, Mantel can't live in that uncertainty. If the books are going to work as books, with consistent characterization, she has to try to reconstruct what people were actually thinking.
And what emerges from WH and BUTB, for me, is a portrait and a tale of people whose thoughts and motivations lead logically to what I know of the history from the sources. Whether or not I would have ventured the same reconstruction, it works. It works piece by piece, step by step, evolving over time. It works not just for Cromwell but for other hotly disputed figures (Anne Boleyn, looking at you).
We can't know whether Mantel 'got it right' with her characters in the same way we can say, "Henry VIII on his deathbed did not look like Jonathan Rhys-Meyers" or "seriously, Reign, WTF." But to me as both a reader and a historian, the books make sense.
They're also fantastic books and you should read them. :)
James Clavell's [Shōgun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dgun_(novel). It's very loosely based off historical Japan, but the attention put towards Japanese culture is pretty impressive.
I've actually asked about it in this sub before and here is an entire thread devoted to it.
It's definitely far from an academic work, but it is interesting starting point for anyone with a western perspective that is interested in historical Japan, specifically the 17th century.
Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine and her Alexander Trilogy, particularly Fire from Heaven about Alexander's youth with Hephaestion and The Persian Boy which detailed the life of the Persian eunuch Bagoas and his eventual status as Alexander's companion. Besides being historically accurate, they are also beautifully written and oh my god so romantic I want to die.
There are plenty of things in the novels that are inventions for the sake of narrative (Bagoas, for example, is hardly mentioned in the Alexander sources) but the day-to-day details of kingship, respect, belief systems, social systems, and society are astonishingly accurate considering that Renault was not a classically-trained classicist but, in fact, a nurse. Historians have been particularly pleased with her treatment of Macedonian society in the time of Alexander's youth and providing many plausible explanations for gaps in Alexander's history and strange decisions made by his father and himself. In addition, The Persian Boy offers a beautiful and quite reasonably accurate portrayl of eunuch culture in Persia and the ancient Meditteranean, a subject that I simply did not know I was lacking information on. The hierarchical structure of concubines, prostitutes, eunuchs, non-eunuch servants, older eunuchs, eunuchs of certain family trees as well as the incredibly understated role of eunuchs in politics (if you're interested in this subject, check out Chinese history which dealt with eunuchs as key political influences for centuries).
The Last of the Wine interested me a great deal because it dealt with homosexuality in ancient Greece in a fascinating way. It's essentially a novel that treats the Greek homosexual relationship as if that was the norm at the time the novel was written. It's certainly a major theme of the novel but the characters don't spend massive chunks of the novel questioning their affections, hiding their love from society, or even describing their passions (there's little to no sex scenes in the novel and it could ostensibly be read as a Platonic relationship but, in my opinion, you'd really have to want it to be Platonic to believe that). Instead they are mainly concerned with their lives, battles, society, place in the world, etc. and work through it together. They even marry women later in the novel and while the change in the relationship is commented on by the characters it's more of a "Ah, no more boys night out!" conversation than an "Alas, thy supple limbs will no more support my lithe body." In true Athenian fashion (at least at this point) it's just not that monumental of an event. While you can't necessarily say the novel is about a man who just so happens to have a homosexual love, it's also not a novel about a man with a homosexual love who just so happens to have a life. We learn about his childhood and how education was set up, we learn about famine, we learn many things about Athenian symposiums, even the very system of eromenos and erastes and how a suitor might be rebuffed by a beloved that was uninterested in his affections.
One of my favourite things about The Last of the Wine in fact is the description of the drinking-game played at symposiums called kottabos. It's obvious that Renault scoured each and every source she could possibly find for this trivial aspect of life and got it down so close to perfectly accurate that you forget it's a historical novel.
For example, there is a scene in which the narrator (beloved) and his lover (suitor) are playing kottabos together. The lover, known for being damn good at the game, throws the lees of the wine in such a way that, when they land, they form the first letter of the narrator's name. When you read the scene, you don't think, "Wow, how accurate!"; instead, your only thought is "Oh my god that's so romantic I'm going to die why doesn't any beautiful man spell my name with wine lees ;_;" (that might just be me but you get the the point). Her historicity is so implicit in the text that you learn by reading the book rather than studying it.
My absolute favorite historical novel series of all time is the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough.
From memory it spans seven books beginning with Gaius Marius' day and his contact with Julius Caesar's grandfather to make a political marriage with Caesar's Aunt. It plays out the drama of the late Republican days to the point where Octavian consolidates power.
Absolutely riveting writing and I couldn't put it down. Undoubtedly some historical license is taken to flesh out the characters and imagine situations they may have been in - for example, Sulla walking a young Caesar home because the author imagines Sulla's first wife - Julia Caesaris - as one of Caesar's aunts, therefore making him Caesar's uncles and a brother-in-law of Gaius Marius.
In any case, the authenticity of its portrayal of Roman culture, Roman society, Roman politics was all superb. Although I wouldn't say its focus was at all on warfare, the parts that did feature warfare were quite interesting.
Overall highly recommended.
Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) is a tremendous work of three massive historical novels (as well as a modern day sequel (Cryptonomicon) tracking the same families in the twentieth century).
The story starts in 1661 and concerns itself with one Daniel Waterhouse, a fictional mathematician and college roommate of Issac Newton. His father was a apocalyptic Puritan who sided with the Roundheads during the English Civil War Waterhouse later becomes good friends with Gottfried Leibniz. One of the greater conflicts in the series is who actually created the calculus, Newton or Leibniz. The books also concern themselves with "the philosophical language," an Enlightenment idea that tried to organize all knowledge into an ordered and scientific model.
Meanwhile, Jack Shaftoe is a vagabond and pirate who circumnavigates the world on his quest to have substantial wealth. He is joined in part by Eliza, a harem slave who proves to be a genius at investment markets and who finds herself embroiled in espionage in the court of Louis XIV. She also ultimately meets up with Waterhouse as she spies on and for England and William of Orange.
There are numerous unhistorical parts to the books, starting with its four principle characters (Waterhouse, Jack, Eliza, and Enoch Root). However, this is not due to lack of research, as the books are meticulously researched. Minor elements of history are intentionally altered to allow the narrative to go where it needs, but it's surprising how faithful it remains to issues of seventeenth and eighteenth century science, economics, sailing, courtly intrigue, coinage, and alchemy. I highly recommend, but be aware that this is 4000+ pages you'll be diving into.
Any historians with an opinion on the accuracy of Conn Igguldens novels? More specifically the Emperor series set in ancient Rome, and the series about Genghis Khan.
Winds of War and War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk (who won the 1951 Pulitzer for The Caine Mutiny) come to my mind for the World War II era. Wouk masterfully weaves the story of a US Family, the Henry's, into the events leading up to the war and throughout the war. Through various events, Wouk is able to place one member of the family at almost all the major political and military events in the war while providing plenty of historical background to the same events. Wouk is also able to accurately portray the major historical figures of the war while never presuming to read their minds as most fiction writers will do. His portrayal of the treatment of the Jews in Italy and Germany through the time period is particularly poignant when he has one of the Henry sons marry a US born Jewish girl who is living in Italy at the outbreak of the war. The struggle of this character to get his family out of Europe through the war and his search for them after the war has ended is incredibly powerful. I also love the fact that Wouk provides plenty of philosophical background material to pursue as to why the Holocaust could even happen in Germany at this time period. The books clock in at well over 2000 pages total so they are a daunting prospect but for anyone who loves to study the time period, they are well worth the effort.
Is it ok if I throw a question in here?
I'd like to know how accurate The Given Day by Dennis Lehane is. It deals with the end of the World War I, the Spanish flu, and the Boston Police Strikes, as well as a perspective from Babe Ruth.
Would In Cold Blood by Truman Capote be a good fit for this thread? It's an incredibly well researched novel, almost on the brink of being a complete historical account of the Clutter murders of 1959. There are very few instances, iirc, of fictional input in the story, with most of the facts being taken from numerous interviews with many friends, family members, neighbors, and the murderers by Capote himself. Granted, it's often argued that Capote took liberties in detailing one of the murderers, as they'd become close through the interviewing process.
Any historians with an opinion on Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World)? They cover quite a span of years and historical locations, and it was the historical aspect that always had me intrigued so, putting aside the introduction of clearly fictional characters into a historical context, I'm wondering about the accuracy of the historical material itself.
I've found anything by Steven Pressfield to be meticulously researched. Gates of Fire, which is an account of the Battle of Thermopylae, Virtues of War, which follows Alexander's campaign in the first person, and Killing Rommel which is an account of The Long Range Desert Group in Africa during WW2 are just three from his stellar arsenal of work.
As an add on to this question, I loved Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series and his Century Trilogy, which take place in mid 12th Century England and a large portion of the 20th Century Europe respectively.
Can anyone comment on the relative historical accuracy of these novels?
Some of my personal favorites are the RFC/RAF novels written by Derek Robinson. He often incorporates actual historical events into his plots, suitably modified, to illustrate the larger points of aviation history. His characters inhabit a world that is often deromanticized and absurdly random, which is no small feat given that aviation is often heavily cliched with tropes on heroism and bravery. Despite its often grim plots, his books' are often characters incredibly funny and the absurdity of their situation is often not lost on them. As one of his characters says in Piece of Cake:
The whole purpose of the armed forces can be summed up in one word – killing. Now, I don’t find that goal – in your words – marvelous, or magnificent, and try as I might I cannot bring myself to feel proud of it. Grateful, perhaps, as one is selfishly grateful for the existence of men who keep the sewage system working. But proud? No.
It's very surprising that no one mentionned it :
EVERY ZOLA'S NOVEL. He wrote books about his time, so XIX century France. He did some awesome research to do these : for example, when he talks about a flat in one of his novels, it means that he went to that flat, took notes about every details, made an outline etc etc Most of the characters never existed though, but they're real in the sense that they could have existed. It's really an in depth look on France at the time.
The Cross of Iron by Willi Heinrich. Also known as The Willing Flesh from its original German publication.
The novel follows a squad of German landsers (infantrymen) on the Eastern Front in 1943. Heinrich himself fought against the Russians and experienced first-hand what the book's jacket calls "the death throes of the mighty German Wehrmacht."
The story follows the camaraderie of the men during their continual retreat and final stand against the Red Army. A major plot point involves the rivalry between the main character and a ruthless officer who sacrifices his own men for personal glory.
The novel tends to stray away from overt historical facts and details for the sake of the story. However, Heinrich's writing is beautiful and haunting because it's all inspired by personal experiences. When he describes a man getting run over by a Russian T-34 tank, it's clear he's not just dreaming this stuff up.
No spoilers, but one of the final scenes involves the characters fighting for control of a factory in a Crimean city. They're running through pitch black corridors lit only by the tracers of submachine guns, and the Russians are racing to cut them off at every corner. It was one of the most terrifying chapters of a book I've ever read.
Sam Peckinpah made a movie of the book in 1977, and it was okay. Personally, I loved the book so much that I'm going to try and get reproduction rights from the publisher to produce a new, more faithful (independent) film adaptation. I don't know what I'm getting myself into, but this is a story that truly resonates in contemporary times.
Brazil Red by Jean Christophe Rufin is a historical fiction taking place in 1555 on the shore of Brazil. It's about the tentative by the French to setup a colonie in Rio de janeiro.
The main character is a malte knight : Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon.
The book cover the religious tension between catholique and protestants, as well as contact with natives peoples.
The book is based on the life of Villagagnon, as well as on personal journal of one of the protestant sailor : Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, autrement dite Amérique, the first edition is from 1578.
Some other character, like the two "truchements" kids are fictional but inspired by common practice of the time in term of language learning and translation.
The natives tribe "Tupis" is describe in a coherent way as other sources:http://brasil500anos.ibge.gov.br/territorio-brasileiro-e-povoamento/historia-indigena/modos-de-vida-dos-tupinamba-ou-tupis.html
It's a fun read!
I'm interested to know the community's thoughts on Space by James Michener. It follows the stories of a whole host of fictional characters as they work through their lives and careers in the shadow of the Space Race as we see America change itself as a country from WWII until the Space Shuttle, giving us looks at how German scientists were brought over and acclimated, the paths some took in the military to become pilots and ultimately astronauts, the creation of NASA, and more. One of my favorite books, and I'm curious what others think of it and its accuracy.
Given Michener's background (he was an advisor at NASA), I trust its accuracy in space-race-related things, and given his general style of historical fiction and extensively researching things, I'd trust he's pretty spot on with his portrayal of ~25-30 years of post-WWII America.
Try Joseph Boyden's The Orenda, which is a novel that deals with the first sustained interactions between Europeans and Indigenous peoples in New France. The story is told from three competing perspectives: a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) woman who is captured, her captor who is a Wendat (Huron) war chief, and the final perspective is that of Jean de Brébeuf, who is easily the most famous of the Jesuit missionaries who worked in Huronia.
It is a book on a par Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, in my humble opinion, and deals with similar themes of a peoples in crisis, who might have ordinarily resisted the incursions of outsiders. In their weakened state, however, the Christian outsiders promised much and delivered when the Wendat ways couldn't. It shows that a great deal of what happens in history is merely good or bad fortune, coupled with disastrous decisions pursued by well-meaning, but ultimately ill-conceived plans. There are a few major events that are transpiring to draw out these themes:
A war between the Haudenosaunee and Wendat that predates European contact. It was a modestly even affair at first, but at the time the book opens the Wendat are starting to lose, and this is because...
The Wendat have been struggling with illness and famine, again before the arrival of Europeans. Needless to say, this has affected their ability to wage war, but the Wendat war chief fails to see he is increasingly alone in the war.
The Jesuit Mission to Huronia arrives as this is happening, promising salvation and protection, and lures many away from their tribal teachings and habits, both for better and for worse.
The book has attracted some controversy, mostly for its brutality and the sense that it could perpetuate ideas of "savagery" among Indigenous peoples prior to the Colonial period in North America. Those criticisms are overblown, however, as the characters clearly understand how combat, capture and torture fit into the social and political lives of their respective peoples. It IS a very brutal book at times, but it also portrays the internal politics of the peoples, and their commitment to their own ways of life, as well as the ways that deviating from tradition can lead to disastrous consequences. That said, it also shows that the Christian Mission did offer some hope to a people who were literally starving to death, and so one comes to understand how they were so successful at converting the Wendat. Brébeuf was not a monster, in that sense, but he was an ideologue who was absolutely wedded to his missionary pursuits. There was no higher calling, just as we see with the Haudenosaunee woman and her Wendat captor.
It's a huge accomplishment, as literary fiction, and I hope it becomes required reading for Canadian high-schoolers.
I would love to make the case for Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. Hear me out!
'Mason & Dixon,' is the 1997 book by Thomas Pynchon. The historical period the book covers surround the eras and overlap of the Enlightenment and Colonial/Pre-Revolutionary America (though many allusions to events before and just after are made). The main action and events of the book surround the meeting of astronomer George Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon, their friendship, their attempted documenting of the 1763 Transit of Venus, and of course and in depth, their famous surveying and chartering of the Mason Dixon line. In effect, the characters named the line which imbued the concept which fascinated the author to write the book, an example unto itself of its style. Indeed, "Mason & Dixon" is a work of "Historiographic Metafiction" meaning that it is written in a style that combines the elements and rules of Historical Fiction and Metafiction. So one can be sure that Pynchon became very well read up on his Historical sources, became quite literate with the years from 1750-1790, but also hoovered the actual fiction of the day, and thus took great pains to write his fiction in something like the literary style and language of the day. This ostensibly to show the extent to which works of both literature and historiography are dependent on the history of discourse. And of course, Pynchon's own zany style and tics (the book is very humorous comes through. Here's a select passage from where Mason & Dixon, now in America, learn about the passage of the Stamp Act (22 March 1765).
The Stamp Act has re-assign'd the roles of the Comedy, and the Audience are in an Uproar. Suddenly Fathers of desirable Girls are no longer minor Inconveniences, some indeed proving to be active Foes, capable of great Mischief. Lads who imagin'd themselves inflexible Rivals for life, find themselves now all but Comrades in Arms. The languorous Pleasantries of Love, are more and more interrupted by the brisk Requisitions of Honor. Over the winter-solid Roads, goes a great seething,- of mounted younger Gentlemen riding together by the dozens upon rented horses, Express Messengers in love with pure Velocity, Disgruntl'd Suitors with Pistols stuff'd in their Spatterdashes, seal'd Waggons not even a western Black-Boy would think of detaining. The May Session of the Burgesses, the eloquent defiance of Mr. Patrick Henry, and the Virginia Resolutions,- that Dividing Ridge beyond which all the Streams of American Time must fall unmappable,- lie but weeks ahead. At the College, Dixon may hear wise Prophecy,- at the State House, interested Oratory,- but there proves no-place quite as congenial to the unmediated newness of History a-transpiring, as Raleigh's Tavern. Viriginians young and old are standing to toast the King's Confoundment. When it's his own turn to, Dixon chooses rather to honor what has ever imported to him,- raising his ale-can, "To the pursuit of Happiness."
Naturally and following the course of the aforementioned traits, shortly following this toast Dixon meets a young and emotional Thomas Jefferson who feels inspired by such a proclamation. Highly comical and yet perhaps pointing to one of the two main issues that I hear people having about Thomas Pynchon, namely that
Certainly Thomas Pynchon is far more reknown for the more literary aspect of his novels. As one of the de-rigeur post-modernists, there is a great amount of anachronism and the characters occasionally reference or allude to things that are simply far and removed from their time (there are within the book, allusions to surf music, whole songs are sung, Lovecraftian horror, a highly comical "first pizza in the colonies," to begin with). Too, there are many instances throughout the novel of things or devices that are simply not reconciable with what we consider to be "possible" (there is a flying robotic duck, alluding possibly to alternate dimensions [this is never made explicit and may only be conjecture] including one in which a "hollow-earth" is reality. So all in all (and these are not all), many things that may if you prefer more traditional or usual Historical Fiction may turn you out. But all of these things work in direct conjunction and toward a greater purpose with the other elements of the book (and to be sure, the aforementioned or only minor elements). Indeed, from angle of a Historian, arguably the way Pynchon views and writes Historical fiction is much more in line with the way History is taught now (things like "plot" and "linear-narrative" being the stuff of "Great Man Theories" and the stuff of Webber, whereas M&D feels like all of your Senior level History classes over the course of a semester all at once, with yucks thrown in.
And as for the other concern? Of all of Pynchon's larger works (ignoring 'Crying of Lot 49,' and more recently, 'Inherent Vice' and 'Bleeding Edge'), 'Mason & Dixon' arguably has his most grounded, relatable, and beloved characters. And where Pynchon can, he adheres to the truth and veracity of their history to the most minute degree (George Mason's family life, feelings are reflective of primary sources, for Jeremiah Dixon, his "Geordie" accent and Quaker heritage are highly preserved. But of the two we admittedly don't have everything, so it is therein that Pynchon takes a few liberties, but nothing that is outrageously egregious to the Historical truth. He does form a bit of a "Laurel & Hardy" vibe out of the two, but this would appear to be in line with History. But this is in line with any Historical Fiction.
Of the History itself, as I've mentioned, all appears to be meticulously researched. I can't provide any confirmation from the Horses' mouth as Pynchon famously has never given any interviews (and we would only even appear to have two photographs of the man), but the stuff holds. In its almost 800 page length (and true to form regarding the nature of contact and relations during the Enlightenment) we encounter a stream of walk-on cameo appearances by the likes of though certainly not limited to John Harrison, Nevil Maskelyne, Robert Clive, Samuel Johnson (Boswell, too), Benjamin Franklin, George and Martha Washington, the aforementioned Thomas Jefferson, to be sure (and many others of the era are mentioned). Too, we encounter (and each in their element and in accordance to History) Jesuits, Chinese geomancers, South African plantation owners, the American kind too, early American slaves, Native Americans, and many many Colonial Americans. It is simply a beautiful book made of the very stuff one could love about the study of History, the literature of the past (and present), and how all of these meet at some juncture between the past and our present (wherein we study these things) and just at the point where present and past begin to fray. I encourage anyone to give it a read
Julian by Gore Vidal
Its a classic really. The story itself concerns the last pagan emperor of Rome, Julian, and his attempt to stem the tide of christianity. Its a romanticized tragedy concerning the death of antiquity and the coming of christianity and the "Dark" ages. This is obviously a kind of portrayal which is no longer academically in fashion but the book also contains many delightful and interesting references to middle- and neoplatonic philosophers such as Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus and many early church figures.
I am particularly fond of any of the First North Americans / "People of the" series by W. Michael and Kathleen O'Neal Gear. They are both actually archaeologists and there is always a list of sources at the end of each novel which gives me confidence that they know their stuff. (In saying that I'm not familiar at all with any of the cultures or sites that they highlight so if anybody can comment on this then that would be fantastic!)
Most their books are standalone and each set in a different time period, location and culture ranging from Ice Age Alaska through to European contact in Florida. There are some themes that carry through and some characters from earlier novels are legendary figures and then become part of the creation myth in later books.
The stories themselves become pretty predictable after you've read 3 or 4 of them. There always seems to be a mysterious trader with a murky past, the jaded old war chief with a heart of gold and a naive young Dreamer (shaman) with something to prove. But I don't really mind that - it's comforting that I know what I'm getting when I pick one up. The real thing they have going for them is the small details. The world that they are living in seems believable and you can tell the authors know a lot about it and care about getting this across to the reader. Without it becoming a dramaticised textbook.
Robert Graves' King Jesus, written in the 1930s, addresses both the historical and scriptural setting for the story of Jesus. It necessarily includes inventions, but doesn't contradict any extant source and sets the scope of the story very wide. It is excellent, especially for readers who are not of any particular faith but are still drawn to the power of the story. It offers a very different interpretation of the story than has ever been suggested anywhere else.
From Sea to Shining Sea by James Alexander Thom. It covers the Lewis and Clark expedition. It is truly a joy to read and I would recommend any of his other titles as well. James Alexander Thom has thoroughly researched all his characters and sites his resources through out the book. Lewis's journals were the primary resource for Sea to Shining Sea of course but the way the author paints the picture of them preparing for their trip, the hardships they faced and even after they had returned home felt very real and made me connect very deeply with this part of American history.
Barbara Mertz wrote a historical fiction series about egypt from 1884 to 1922. They are called the Amelia Peabody mysteries. They follow a wealthy British womans career in Egypt including egyptology, romance, murder mysteries and real life events. She recieved a phd in egyptology in the 50's. She has written many other books including two books about anciet egpyt.
The main characters are both practicing egyptologists and many of the events not directly relating to them are historically accurate and many of the characters are based on real people. They have roughly correct ancient myths in most of them that are paralleled in the books.
These are her nonfiction books.
Temples, Tombs, and Hieroplyphs 1964
Two Thousand Years in Rome 1968
Red Land, Black Land 1966
George Ebers' "Cleopatra",
It's incredibly vivid and interesting, all while remaining accurate to the history and the time period, which is rare enough for novels set in antiquity.
One thing that helped was that the majority of the novel was written from the perspectives of side characters (real and fictional) which allowed the author to characterize and flesh out characters like Cleopatra, Mark Antony, Caesarion and Octavian from the third person, which is how history remembers them for the most part, making their deeds, words and behaviours tell a story about them that is convincing and detailed, while not departing too far from fact (I say too far because for all I know about them I still was not there, although I am very interested, and I dare say knowledgeable about both Ptolemaic Egypt, as well as the Roman Republic particularly as it approached it's transition into an empire). The storyline begins after war has been declared between Octavian and Cleopatra (as well as Mark Antony by association) and ends with Cleopatra's suicide and the annexation of Egypt, and the novel's namesake does not make an appearance until the novel's second act (but the clever writing keeps things more than interesting and relevant enough up till then, and at no point did I ever willingly set it down) One thing I appreciate is the author's refraining from applying modern, Christianity-influenced morals to ancient societies and individuals shaped by paganism, it's refreshing for a writer to allow the reader to make up their own mind about the right or wrong of certain actions (although I imagine George Ebers was a fan of Cleo, but then again, even ancient writers of history like Suetonius and Plutarch had their biases and favourites).
The setting is masterfully crafted, and you can tell that it was written with a lot of care for detail and accuracy, but also with an eye for artistry, as well as how well the cultural, social, and political nuances of a setting with so many influences, Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Judean etc. And the events mirror reality, but Ebers took historical happenings and projected emotion on them, such as the atmosphere of confusion, fear and false joviality in Alexandria following the Battle of Actium.
The amount of time and research that went into this novel is apparent, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the time period, as unlike many dramatic works based around these events, this one allows the tensions and drama of history excite the reader, rather than trying to loosely base the author's own story in that time and place and slap a historical filter on it (even HBO's Rome, which I thought was great mind you, failed for me in the accuracy department) with the exception of some possible mystical elements although these are kept vague and implied as we really only know that certain characters believe in the supernatural, and others do not, which is need I say, accurate for a time when even rational and learned men believed in such powers as those possessed by the Vestal Virgins and the priests and acolytes of various deities.
In short, this novel is an enjoyable read suited for both hardcore fans of history and casual adventure seekers, and as a bonus it is in the common domain because of it's age (which unlike many books does not show in the writing) Here is a link on Project Gutenberg where you can read it free of charge
Hopefully you will find it enjoyable and informative!
The Steel Wave by Jeff Shaara is incredible. He uses real notes from Rommel's journal and diary, read interviews from the people he wrote about, and even interviewed the paratrooper specifically. It's awesome. It slows down the invasion of Omaha Beach so you can easily grasp what's going on, and it does a good job of portraying how quickly people were shot to shit. It goes into detail about what the aftermath of the battle was. It follows one paratrooper as he goes deeper into France, and mentions why so many paratroopers were dropped all over the place. Not to mention why the transports were flying so fast.
Q, by Luther Blisset ( a pseudonym for an Italian writers collective) is one of the most incredible historical novels I've read. It follows an anabaptist as he travels through wartorn Europe during the Thirty Years War and afterwards, getting caught up in the apocalyptic insanity of Munster, then falling in with the survivors who washed up in the liberal enclaves of the Netherlands, before heading to Italy. All the time he is pursued by a Vatican Counter-Reformation spy known only as Q, who writes letters back to his handlers in Rome detailign his pursuit of the mysterious anabaptist who keeps changing his name and identity as he struggles to survive among the wars, massacres, and persecutions that wrack Europe. The accuracy seems very well done, and the book shows a vast and impressive knowledge of the Reformation from the point of view of the non-mainstream protestants who broke with Luther over what they saw as his unacceptable compromises with the ecclesiastical and secular authorities. It highlights an area of history that is all-too often overlooked even in histories of the period, which focus solely on the big names of Luther and Calvin, and ignore the many others who did not follow them.
Hi everyone! This is a great question and it has received quite a few responses, which is always a good thing for people like me, as I'm constantly on the hunt for good books. However, I would to remind everyone that the rules are still in effect here, so we are looking for in-depth answers by people who know quite a bit about the period covered by these books. It is not enough to simply say that 'Book X is great!' or that 'Book Y is pretty accurate', especially if your answer consists of just one sentence. We are not demanding people to write long forensic reviews here (though if you want to write one, we would like to encourage you to do so!), but some more detail would be great. For example, you could compare what happened in the book with what actually happened, what aspects of history were portrayed differently for narrative reasons, or maybe what research the author did and how they integrated that into their stories. Sadly, answers that do not attempt to meet these standards will be removed, as per the rules of this subreddit.
Additionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off-topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread. Thank you!
The Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell does a great job of weaving a fictitious character's actions into historical events.
Sharpe is a soldier in the British Army that fights in India for the British East India Company and then in the Napoleonic wars, slowly advancing through the ranks of the British army. All of the descriptions of battles such as that of Waterloo, Seringapatam and Assaye are accurate and Cornwell delves deep into the accuracy of his historical descriptions in the back of the book, even acknowledging the individual soldiers whose actions are attributed to Richard Sharpe.
One particular example that sticks out to me is in Sharpe's Tiger at the Siege of Seringapatam. The Tipu Sultan is killed in the siege in a dark tunnel and there is no historical description of his death. Cornwell attributes the Tipu's death to Sharpe, but all other descriptions, such as the Tipu's brave defense and the location of his death, are accurate.
Overall, the series is a fun and easy read that gives you some accurate context into the time period. There is also a BBC series about Sharpe starring Sean Bean.
Conscience of the King by Alfred Duggan. It follows the life of Cerdic Elesing, the legendary Anglo-Saxon founder of the kingdom of Wessex. The actions of the main character are of course speculative, but the setting is wonderfully rendered and gives a great glimpse into life in Post-Roman Britain. The reader sees the gradual decline of central authority and the encroachment of the Saxons into Britain. Historical figures like Ambrosiys Aurelianus make appearances, and there's even a depiction of King Arthur and the Battle of Badon Hill (though of course it's re-cast in the context of the Saxons vs. the Romano-British).
All in all quite well done and highly recommend.
Maybe you could supplement your reading of the Amazon review by reading the novel. Then your be in a position to comment on its historical validity. Never met a scholar who forms opinions about things without reading them. Must be a new form of scholarship.
1813 and 1815 by Sabine Ebert. Those two novels cover the historical events around Leipzig in those years. (No clue whether they have been translated from German into English yet.)
Both novels have prefaces by noteable German historians (several professors) praising the historical accuracy. The author also moved to Leipzig in order to have easy access to the historical sources.
Most of her protagonists are historical figures and she is very meticulous in tracing their whereabouts on a particular day. The only problem with the books are her writing style. Because they are so accurate it feels like I am reading something in between a novel and a history textbook, which is to say the writing is wordy and a bit on the dull side.
The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Whereas it doesn't give a wholey accurate presentation of the time period (Partly down to the gap between knowledge of Pompeii/Roman life then compared to now), I think it portrays the life of Rome in AD 79 in a fairly accurate way to how we now think of it. I do have to mention that I am recalling this as a more vague remembrance of the book rather than someone who has read it within the past year or so. I last read it about 7ish years ago for context. It does go a bit overboard on the Egyptian cults iirc as a warning.