shouldazagged
Absent Comrade
I'm a history enthusiast, and most of the fiction I've read over the years (except for the wonderfully, wickedly witty work of Terry Pratchett) has been historical novels. I'd be interested to know what your preferences are in that field.
Two of mine:
Nicholas Monsarrat, The Cruel Sea.
I think this is the best sea novel I've ever read. It's about the British convoy escorts in the Northern Atlantic--corvettes and frigates--in World War II. Monsarrat was a Royal Navy officer (RNVR) in the escort forces, commanding a frigate by the end of the war. His writing about the sea's violence, the terror of the U-boat menace, the plight of survivors of sunk ships, and the men themselves, is vivid and powerful.
MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville.
It took Kantor twenty-five years to research and write this massive novel, and it shows the care he gave it. His description of the Confederate POW camp at Anderson Station, Georgia, is horrifying, as the camp certainly was. But his depiction of the lives of his characters--Yankee prisoners, Confederate officers and guards, and civilian neighbors (the framework of the novel is the observations of a plantation owner, some of whose land was taken to build the camp), evoke not only the time and the details of life in those years but also the incredibly varied backgrounds of the people. The prisoners range from Iowa farm boys and New England small towners to New York City Irish gangsters and a wealthy, brilliant and privileged young Jew who joined the Union Army out of pure patriotism; and the reader gets to know them all amazingly well. If you don't read any other Civil War fiction, you should treat yourself to this amazing book.
Okay, what are some of your choices for historical fiction?
Two of mine:
Nicholas Monsarrat, The Cruel Sea.
I think this is the best sea novel I've ever read. It's about the British convoy escorts in the Northern Atlantic--corvettes and frigates--in World War II. Monsarrat was a Royal Navy officer (RNVR) in the escort forces, commanding a frigate by the end of the war. His writing about the sea's violence, the terror of the U-boat menace, the plight of survivors of sunk ships, and the men themselves, is vivid and powerful.
MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville.
It took Kantor twenty-five years to research and write this massive novel, and it shows the care he gave it. His description of the Confederate POW camp at Anderson Station, Georgia, is horrifying, as the camp certainly was. But his depiction of the lives of his characters--Yankee prisoners, Confederate officers and guards, and civilian neighbors (the framework of the novel is the observations of a plantation owner, some of whose land was taken to build the camp), evoke not only the time and the details of life in those years but also the incredibly varied backgrounds of the people. The prisoners range from Iowa farm boys and New England small towners to New York City Irish gangsters and a wealthy, brilliant and privileged young Jew who joined the Union Army out of pure patriotism; and the reader gets to know them all amazingly well. If you don't read any other Civil War fiction, you should treat yourself to this amazing book.
Okay, what are some of your choices for historical fiction?
