Whether you’re looking to escape our chaotic present or dive into its roots in the past, this year’s historical novels will amply satisfy. Here are my choices for the 10 best, in alphabetical order.
The Antidote
by Karen Russell
Merging impeccable period detail with lyrical flights of fantasy, Russell’s novel is set in a fictional Nebraska town in the aftermath of the all-too-real 1935 Black Sunday storm that devastated what came to be known as the Dust Bowl. Its central character is a “prairie witch” who acts as a vault for the painful memories her guilt-ridden customers would rather forget.
A Calamity of Noble Houses
by Amira Ghenim
This suspenseful multigenerational portrait of two Tunisian families, translated from the Arabic by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil, illuminates the conflicts and contradictions in a rapidly changing society. Multiple narrators add to its “Rashomon”-like quality as the events of one fateful night in the winter of 1935 reverberate through the following years.
Fonseca
by Jessica Francis Kane
In 1952, the yet-to-be novelist Penelope Fitzgerald visited a deeply eccentric expat household in rural Mexico with her 6-year-old son, drawn from their London home by the possibility that two elderly Irish ladies might make him their heir. Thirty years later, she touched on this journey in an essay but never wrote about it again. Thankfully, Kane was inspired to follow the trail, deploying an understated wit and bittersweet wisdom reminiscent of Fitzgerald’s own work.
Gabriële
by Anne Berest and Claire Berest
By reconstructing the life of their great-grandmother, the Berest sisters restore Gabriële Buffet-Picabia to her rightful place in the history of early-20th-century avant-garde art. Translated from the French by Tina Kover, their narrative draws on a variety of sources — as well as some heartfelt personal speculation — to document one woman’s influence as a muse, along with the personal and professional sacrifices she endured in the process.
Isola
by Allegra Goodman
Goodman’s novel was inspired by the almost-impossible real-life tale of a 16th-century French aristocrat who was abandoned on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. From the scanty historical sources, she has created an absorbing fictional first-person account of a young woman ensnared by her guardian’s greed and ambition. Not content with stealing her fortune to finance his adventures in Canada, he insists that she accompany him to New France, with dire consequences when she dares to rebel.
The Remembered Soldier
by Anjet Daanje
Translated from the Dutch by David McKay, Daanje’s provocatively labyrinthine novel dissects the consciousness of an amnesiac veteran of World War I who has spent four years in a Belgian asylum only to be retrieved by a woman who insists she is his wife. Trying to maneuver through a maze of strange new possibilities, he continues to harbor deep doubts and even deeper fears. The stories she tells him about their marriage aren’t entirely convincing. Can he trust her? Can he trust himself?
Shadow Ticket
by Thomas Pynchon
Deploying his signature free-form, wisecracking dialogue and his gift for bizarre high jinks, Pynchon introduces us to a strikebreaker turned private eye trying to eke out a living in early 1930s Milwaukee, just before the repeal of Prohibition. The action is nominally triggered by the search for a runaway cheese heiress that will plunge our hero into a welter of Nazis, spies and counterspies. But, as always with Pynchon, the appeal lies in his energetic wordplay.
Sons and Daughters
by Chaim Grade
A bustling panorama of the Eastern European Orthodox Jewish life that was soon to be destroyed by the Holocaust. First serialized in the 1960s and ’70s in New York’s Yiddish newspapers, it’s only now available in a vibrant translation by Rose Waldman. The principal characters are a village rabbi, his wife and their wayward children, whose tense but often humorously depicted relations are akin to those depicted by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholem Aleichem.
This Here Is Love
by Princess Joy L. Perry
Perry’s searing first novel never flinches from the brutality of plantation life in the early years of the Virginia Colony. With steely empathy, she probes the complexities and contradictions of a society built on bondage. As she explores the lives of the enslaved and their overlords, her intertwined plots are gripping, but what’s more impressive is the way she guides us through her characters’ emotional depths.
The Wayfinder
by Adam Johnson
Ancient Polynesia is the source of this epic tale of dislocation, disruption and discovery. Based on intensive research and honoring the region’s oral traditions, Johnson’s ambitious storytelling also occasionally detours into magic realism. As it introduces us to two very different island societies, the novel contrasts their attitudes toward communal life and power. At its heart is a teenage girl who will take part in a desperate sea voyage led by the “wayfinder” of the title.
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