Cem’s travels have continued. As one of the few Westerners to visit Burma (recently, anyway), he has decided to take advantage of the opportunity by bringing along some literature that might be of use to the Burmese. Good luck and be careful Cem!I am heading into Mandalay via Air Mandalay the day after tomorrow. Mandalay is the second most significant city in Burma, a country which has been under the boot, physically and psychologically, of one of the most oppressive governments in the world for some 30 years. save N.Korea and maybe now Tajikistan, there are few places more old-school totalitarian – even Syria is more free than this place.Books, fiction and nonfiction, have always played an important role in denting the armor (and often more) of authoritarian rulers, just ask Vaclav Havel and George Soros. So – I would like to do my part in bringing in some interesting material, in denting the armor, even if the tiniest chink. I don’t intend on smuggling in tomes of guerilla tactics, or explicitly subversive rants published by expatriot opposition groups – I just want to bring in some books to give to these information starved people (well, the English speaking upper-mid class, probably students and hopefully not ‘guest’ intelligence, that read English), something that will either give them some inspiration, distract them, help them deal with/understand the living in an authoritarian/totalitarian society in an explicit way.Now, 1984 is an obvious choice, and I already have 3 used copies in my bag. Anyone could have come up with that. I need some titles that will impress the fleshy white activist chick crowd in Chiang Mai! Anyone else have any ideas? Even if I am unable to get them in time -which is almost certain – I’d love to hear what people have to say.I agree that 1984 is the perfect book for this situation. With simple, yet riveting prose, Orwell creates a generic totalitarian society, which, stripped of its ceremonial trappings becomes instantly recognizable as a society of horrors. One can imagine a Soviet dissident reading his samizdat copy by candlelight in an attic or basement and being struck by wave after wave of sickening, empowering recognition. It is no question that Orwell is most needed in places where books are banned and burned, so it seems fitting to bring along a book that addresses that very topic, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Other suggestions that come to mind are One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. And finally there is The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the towering giant of dissident literature. These books, once cutting edge, but now required reading in our schools, will surely fail to impress the “fleshy white activist chick crowd.” Anyone have anything sufficiently subversive to recommend? Send me an email or press the comments link below.Mystery and the Buddha I finished reading Bangkok 8 by John Burdett yesterday. The mystery genre is highly underrepresented on the list of books I’ve read. I’m not sure if this is from lack of interest or lack of time (all these guys wrote so many books, and I’m worried that once I started I wouldn’t be able to stop.) Anyone who has read this blog consistently knows that I’m a sucker for books set in exotic locales, and the fact that this book is set in Thailand and was well reviewed, led me to pick it up. First the bad: I found the book to be less than gracefully written. At times the language is painfully stilted. I know that I am not used to the “hard-boiled” style that many detective stories employ, but too often the prose caused me to lurch to a standstill while my brain rotated the offensive sentence around in my head, unwilling to go on. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by how well Burdett used Thai Buddhism to add fascinating depth and nuance to the story. I have often been wary of Buddhism in general, mostly because my only experience with it is as a trendy religion, the accessory of Beastie Boys fans and cause-hungry hippies for whom the Free Tibet bumper sticker perfectly conceals the country club parking permit on the bumper of the Volvo (cf: “fleshy white activist chick crowd” in previous paragraph). Burdett’s Thai Buddhism, however, is both unassuming and universal. He presents it as inseparable from Thai culture, and naturally the Buddhist way of thinking, so different from our cold Western logic, becomes integral to solving the mystery (we are investigating the gruesome death by multiple snakes of an American marine, by the way.) It’s not so tidy as most detective stories, but then that too, follows the Buddhist way of thinking and is the strongpoint of the book.Two More Books That Bear Mentioning and an Important Programming NoteI’m starting to hear good things about the new Garrison Keillor novel Love Me. Brian pointed out the laudatory review in the Washington Post. Also, how could I have not mentioned this yet. Though I have never cracked the spine of a Chuck Palahniuk novel, I should mention that fans of his will be pleased to hear that he has a new book coming out very soon: Diary: A Novel. I haven’t seen any reviews yet, but I have heard that this one might be his most twisted yet.Tomorrow I’m getting on a plane and flying to the East Coast for 10 days. I have a lot planned and so I will probably not be able to post extensively. However, if any of you feel like picking up the slack and have some book-related news that just can’t wait email me or use the form at the right, and I will post it up. Thanks!
According to Wikipedia, not the definitive source in this realm but a decent enough place to start, a work of historical fiction can be defined as one in which “the story is set among historical events, or more generally, in which the time of the action predates the lifetime of the author.” This is a bit broad for my taste, but I think it’s a good place to start. Going by this definition, a lot of books that we think of first as fiction could also qualify as historical fiction. Some of my favorite books by contemporary authors fall into this category. T.C. Boyle’s Water Music is about a Scottish explorer in Africa in the late 18th century, and Edward P. Jones’ book The Known World is about black slave owners in Virginia in the 1840s. Another example of a book like these is Charles Frazier’s Civil War novel, Cold Mountain.
But these books aren’t really historical fiction in the same way that I, Claudius is historical fiction. Traditionally, in historical fiction, the history is like another character in the novel, and the action is more likely to be ripped from the history books, as it were, placing the reader in a novelized version of true historical events. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell about Atlanta during the Civil War is a famous example. Another is James Clavell’s Shogun about the 16th century exploration of Asia. Of the few historical novels I’ve read, my favorite would have to be Leon Uris’ Trinity, a powerful epic about the Irish struggle for independence at the turn of the 20th century.
Well, the sequel Claudius the God is also a must-read. I have a sort of obsession with Graves, I have read "I, Claudius" countless times. There is really nothing else quite like it. Graves wrote a lot of other historical fiction, but a lot of it is quite peculiar, like "Wife to Mr. Milton" or "They Hanged My Sainted Billy." I like them, but they are a bit of an acquired taste.
Gore Vidal's "Julian" is in my opinion his best, though the nineteenth-century American ones are also appealing (esp. Lincoln and Burr); Rosemary Sutcliffe's young-adult Roman-and-British history novels are also very good (and actually, I think young-adult historical fiction is often more appealing than the adult stuff; I recommend E. L. Konigsberg's "A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver," about Eleanor of Aquitaine). Margaret Yourcenar's Hadrian is a classic but I don't know if it stands up as well as Graves from the standpoint of pure enjoyment. Mary Renault is really wonderful if you haven't read her, must check it out if not: "The Last of the Wine" is perhaps my favorite, but there's a really good one about Alexander the Great ("Fire From Heaven"), an excellent one based on the (mythic) Theseus ("The Bull From the Sea"), and "The Praise Singer" is another favorite of mine (it's years since I read them, I may have got some of the titles wrong).
Hilary Mantel's "A Place of Greater Safety" is an interesting (though to me ultimately not so satisfying) novel about the French Revolution, if you like novels that treat public political events. My best other recommendation is Sebastian Faulks; I think "Birdsong" and "Charlotte Grey" are both extremely satisfying novels, about WWI and WWII respectively. If WWII counts as historical, of course, there start to be lots of good books to read….
All right, that's enough! But there's a lot of great other stuff out there too, of course. War and Peace is in some sense the great historical novel, put that one on the list too if you haven't read it…
Stephen Harrigan's Gates of the Alamo is a moving piece of historical fiction, told by both the Texian and Mexican sides.
I would like to add a few suggestions to the list.
Madison Smartt Bell's Haitian trilogy, starting with All Soul's Rising and ending with The Stone That the Builder Refused, is historical fiction on an epic scale. It tells the story of the Haitian slave revolution. This is a great example, in my opinion, of what historical fiction does best.
Tom Franklin's Hell at the Breech recreates an unusual private war between wealthy landowners and poor sharecroppers that raged in the backwoods of Alabama in the 1890s. A well-done recreation of a sad and mostly forgotten incident in American history.
Elizabeth Gaffney's Metropolis recreated New York's Five Corners area – think Dickens redoing Gangs of New York. A good story, well told, with excellent period details.
mario varga llosa. Feast of the Goat. the most harrowing account of a country under the rule of a murderous despot ever written. a masterpiece. a must read. seriously.
This was my original question and thanks for the great responses! If anyone is still inspired, any ideas for historical fiction surrounding the French Revolution?
I have to add Aztec. I love that book so much. It follows the sunset of the Aztec empire. Really fantastic.
-Erik.
French Revolution: Well, Tale of Two Cities is the obvious, and it is really pretty great if you haven't read it (though it's so far inferior to Dickens' best that I can't say it's one of my favorites). Victor Hugo has a really wonderful novel called Quatre-Vingt-Treize (1793), which I think should be more or less available in paperback–it was certainly in print in the mid-90s. I'm ignorant about other French-language stuff, though Michelet's French Revolution history is fantastic (history, not fiction) and there's also a film called Danton starring Gerard Depardieu that I liked when I saw it.
The Hilary Mantel novel I mentioned above is about the French Revolution; another thing well worth reading tho more on the truth than fiction thing is Richard Holmes's essay about Mary Wollstonecraft in Paris during the revolutionary years, it's in his collection Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer.
For Ancient Rome, try the "Masters of Rome" series by Colleen McCullough. For Africa, I've always like Wilbur Smith's sagas of the Courtneys and the Ballantynes.
RE: French Revolution
Anatole France's "The Gods Will Have Blood" is an excellent historical novel set during the Revolution.
Victor Hugo's hard to find "Ninety-Three" centers around a counter-revolutionary invasion during the Revolution.