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Books › Lists › Best Historical Fiction Books
The most acclaimed historical fiction novels — from medieval England to WWII France to Imperial Russia.
Historical fiction at its best does two things simultaneously: it illuminates the period it depicts and illuminates the present by contrast. The books on this list have been chosen not for period breadth but for literary quality — these are the historical novels that read as great literature first and period reconstruction second. They range across centuries and continents, from Tudor England to 20th-century Korea to WWII France to Imperial Russia via Stalinist Moscow.
What distinguishes the best historical fiction from mere costume drama is an honest engagement with the strangeness of the past — its different moral structures, its different textures of daily life, its genuinely foreign relationship to what we now take for granted. BookBrowse’s expert editors have reviewed each of these titles with attention to both their historical accuracy and their literary ambition. Discussion questions and reading guides are available for all titles below.
by Anthony Doerr
A stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Winner of the 2014 BookBrowse Award for Fiction.
by Hilary Mantel
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power.
by Min Jin Lee
A new tour de force from the bestselling author of Free Food for Millionaires, for readers of The Kite Runner and Cutting for Stone.
by Michael Ondaatje
A burned man, a Canadian nurse, a Sikh sapper, and a thief shelter in a ruined Italian villa at the end of WWII. Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel moves between the present in the villa and the desert maps that the burned man made in the 1930s.
by Amor Towles
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility - a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel.
by George Saunders
In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet.
by Markus Zusak
A story about, among other things: A girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul. Winner of the 2007 BookBrowse Ruby Award.
by Ken Follett
The building of a cathedral in 12th-century England. Follett’s enormous novel is the ur-text of popular historical fiction — obsessively researched, architecturally detailed, and impossibly readable. If you haven’t read it, it will consume your life for a week. Consider that a recommendation.
by Umberto Eco
A medieval monk investigates a series of deaths in an Italian abbey. Eco’s debut is simultaneously a locked-room mystery, a semiotics textbook, and a meditation on the nature of truth — and it is set in 1327 with such period precision that it reads like a primary source.
by Kristin Hannah
Winner of the 2015 BookBrowse Fiction Award
Vivid and exquisite in its illumination of a time and place that was filled with great monstrosities, but also great humanity and strength, a novel that will have readers talking long after they turn the last page.
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