Book Specs Author: Margaret Atwood Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Date: 2000 Number of Pages: 521 Genre: Historical Fiction Synopsis ‘Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.’ Thus begins The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood’s stunning new novel. Laura Chase’s older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent […]
Tag: Historical Fiction
Book Review # 78: Killing Commendatore
Book Specs Author: Haruki Murakami Translator: Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen (from Japanese) Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Publishing Date: October 2018 Number of Pages: 681 pages Genre: Magical Realism, Historical Fiction Synopsis In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of […]
Book Review # 77: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Book Specs Author: Ernest Hemingway Publisher: Quality Paperback Book Club Publishing Date: 1993 Number of Pages: 471 Genre: War Novel Historical Fiction Synopsis Written in the late 1930s, when democracy faces its greatest peril, For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway’s masterful novel about love, death, honor and betrayal. Set amidst the tragedy of the […]
Book Review # 74: The War of the End of the World
Book Specs Author: Mario Vargas Llosa Translator: Helen R. Lane Publisher: Picador Publishing Date: August 2008 Number of Pages: 568 pages Genre: Historical Novel Synopsis Deep within the remote backlands of nineteenth-century Brazil lies Canudos, home to all the damned of the earth: prostitutes, bandits, beggars, and every kind of outcast. It is a place where history […]
Book Review # 72: The Master and Margarita
Book Specs Author: Mikhail Bulgakov Translator: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky Publisher: Penguin Books Publishing Date: 2016 Number of Pages: 396 Genre: Magical Realism, Satirical, Romance, Historical Metafiction Synopsis Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. One spring afternoon, the Devil, trailing file and chaos in his wake, weaves himself […]
Book Review # 67: The Glass Palace
Book Specs Author: Amitav Ghosh Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers Publishing Date: 2001 Number of Pages: 547 pages Genre: Historical, Romance Synopsis An extraordinary epic, THE GLASS PALACE is a masterful novel of love, war and family and presents us with a band of memorable characters, spread across Burma, Malaya and India, and across three generations […]
Book Review # 57: The Sympathizer
Book Specs Author: Nguyễn Thanh Việt Publisher: Grove Press Publishing Date: 2015 Number of Pages: 382 pages Genre: Historical, Satirical Synopsis The winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as five other awards, The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose […]
Book Review # 56: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Book Specs Author: Susanna Clarke Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Publishing Date: 2009 Number of Pages: 1006 pages Genre: Historical, Alternate History, Fantasy, English Fiction Synopsis It is 1806, the Napoleonic Wars are raging, and most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England – until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals his powers and […]
Book Review # 53: The Complete Persepolis
Specifications Author: Marjane Satrapi Publisher: Vintage Publishing Date: 2008 Number of Pages: 343 pages Genre: Historical, Graphic Novel, Biographical, Bildungsroman Synopsis Persepolis is the story of Satrapi’s unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a […]
Book Review # 51: The Book Thief
Book Specs Author: Markus Zusak Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Publishing Date: March 2016 Number of Pages: 550 Genre: Historical, Young Adult Synopsis “It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger finds her life changed when she unearths a single object […]
