historical fiction

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• 5/28/2023
  

  What We Can Learn From—and Through—Historical Fiction

  by Carol K. Kammen

  "I have written this to praise historical fiction when it respects the line between our times and the past, when it adheres to the known-truth and does not pervert it for excitement—or for book sales."

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• 4/2/2023
  

  Learning from Historical Fiction: A Family Tale Reveals a Brief Multicultural Moment of the American West

  by Alix Christie

  One novelist's work adapting the story of her 19th century forebears (the last Hudson's Bay Company trader in the US, his Nez Perce wife, and the family that they raised) led her to archives, historians, and the challenge of narrating the complexities of the period when conquest supplanted a hybrid indigenous-European society between the Rockies and the Pacific. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  10/7/2022
  

  Hilary Mantel, Historian

  by Samuel Clowes Huneke

  The celebrated novelist legacy to scholars is a model for examining psychological complexity and political motivation in the past. 

• 
• SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
  7/4/2021
  

  History Is a Story that Satisfies Power: A Conversation with Joshua Cohen (Author of "The Netanyahus")

  Joshua Cohen's novel fictionalizes the American academic career of Benzion Netanyahu, whose American raised sons became huge figures in Israeli military and political history.

• 
• 10/18/2020
  

  Where In The World Are You? How My Great-Grandmother’s Letters Helped Me Locate My Great-Uncle after 78 Years

  by Hazel Gaynor

  "Disaster and tragedy are often where we find our strongest bonds, and as we find ourselves separated from family and distanced from loved ones, stories of community and shared hope are, arguably, more important than ever."

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• SOURCE: Calgary Herald
  5/31/2020
  

  Robert J. Sawyer Tackles the Atomic Bomb with Alternate-History Novel, “The Oppenheimer Alternative”

  Robert J. Sawyer's novel is built around the ethical and moral ramifications of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which the author hopes will receive deep reflection on their 75th anniversaries.

• 
• 5/31/2020
  

  "Fiction Makes a Better Job of The Truth"? Telling the Erased Story of Lucia Joyce

  by Annabel Abbs

  A historical novel exposes the complex relationship between historians and sources: "Because Lucia’s own voice had been effectively smothered, most ‘facts’ came from those later responsible for incarcerating her in a series of mental asylums and hospitals. Few sources are genuinely independent, memory is notoriously fickle, and all facts are open to interpretation."

• 
• 3/22/2020
  

  Why Holocaust Fiction?

  by Bernice Lerner

  Had they had a choice, I believe Hitler’s victims would have wanted nothing about the mortal crimes against them falsified. 

• 
• 3/6/2020
  

  Historical Novelists Owe the Truth to Readers–and to History

  by Sharon Kay Penman

  In insisting upon the importance of historical accuracy in novels, I am also making an argument that novels can add a valuable dimension to the study of history.

• 
• 9/1/19
  

  Writing Fiction about Real People

  by Gill Paul

  The best novels about real people make us re-evaluate the subject and perhaps alter our preconceived ideas.

• 
• 8/25/19
  

  Chocolate and the History Behind Historical Fiction

  by Karen Brooks

  The history of chocolate in England and how a 17th century diary and a chance encounter with public history inspired The Chocolate Maker's Wife. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/24/19
  

  Readers can’t get enough World War II fiction, and authors are happy to keep the books coming

  You can’t throw a potato peel without hitting a new bestseller about the perils of Nazi Germany.

• 
• SOURCE: Fargo-Moorhead Forum
  10-13-13
  

  MSUM Historian Pens Murder-Mysteries

  Gerald Anderson follows an old adage for authors: write what you know.

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• On Creating a Groundbreaking Historical Novel

  by Robin Lindley

  SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhold Heydrich in 1940. Credit: German Federal Archives.I just hope that, however bright and blinding the veneer of fiction that covers this fabulous story, you will still be able to see through it to the historical reality that lies behind.-- Laurent Binet, HHhHIn Prague on May 27, 1942, Slovak factory worker Jozef Gabcik and Czech soldier Jan Kubis attacked and mortally wounded Reinhard Heydrich, the SS Obergruppenführer (equivalent to a full general) and Nazi Protector of Bohemia and Moravia -- a man so ambitious and casually cruel that Hitler called him “The Man with the Iron Heart.”