5 Novels That Take an Unlikely Approach to Historical Fiction

The Wake, by Paul Kingsnorth
The best way to describe this novel is as a post-apocalyptic story of resistance to alien invaders, but set in the 11th century—the aliens in this case being the Normans who invaded and conquered England in 1066, imposing a foreign culture, language, and political system on the Anglo Saxon natives. What makes the story really leap off the page is the incredible language Kingsnorth uses to give voice to Buccmaster, a landowner enraged by the destruction of his world, who leads a guerrilla effort to take revenge. It’s an approximation of Old English Kingsnorth calls a “shadow tongue,” combining obscure and obsolete words with an unusual phonetic approach, resulting in a book that remains comprehensible while giving you some idea of what people sounded like at the time. The end result is powerfully immersive and thought-provoking.

The Vorrh, by B. Catling
In The Vorhh and its sequel The Erstwhile, Catling somehow takes historical facts and real people and combines them with a dreamy, mythical world that borrows from several cultures, creating something that’s not exactly historical, not exactly science fiction, and not exactly easy. It’s centered on the titular forest in Africa, which no human has ever returned from; some say it’s filled with monsters, others suspect it’s the location of the Garden of Eden. Characters who become obsessed and ensnared by the Vorhh include real people like photographer Eadweard Muybridge and Sarah Winchester, heir to the rifle fortune and creator of the infamous Winchester Mystery House.

Viper Wine, by Hermiona Eyre
Venetia Stanley was a real person, a celebrated celebrity of the 17th century. She inspired poems and was an much-demanded model for painters, who found her captivating. She died mysteriously at the age of 33; her husband blamed her use of “viper wine,” which was likely a combination of wine and snake venom, and an unlikely cause of death. Eyre takes these historical facts and crafts a novel about a woman desperate to hang onto her youthful beauty that soon dovetails into a battle between science and magic, superstition and religion. Along the way, Eyre explores the evergreen issue of feminine beauty and the value society places on youth. The atmosphere drips with style and portent, transforming an odd historical mystery into a compelling exploration of dread and mortality.

The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Ishiguro’s first stroke of brilliance is to conflate the mythical Arthurian England that probably never existed with a more realistic depiction of England in the Dark Ages. Portraying a fictional universe in a very realistic and historically-accurate way creates an off-kilter universe the reader is never certain of, and allows Ishiguro to play with every aspect of the story—are the events encountered by the elderly couple seeking their long-lost son truly magical, or are they mundane moments interpreted by superstitious, terrified people? Although it’s a work of fantasy, you walk away from it with a reasonably accurate impression of what life was like for the people in England shortly after the Saxon invasions—including the fact that myth and magic held sway over their every experience.

Every Man for Himself, by Beryl Bainbridge
Bainbridge uses the fateful voyage of the Titanic as both the setting for this story of a wealthy young man’s coming-of-age and a metaphor for the world he represents. Rescued via adoption from a childhood of poverty, young Morgan straddles both steerage and the upper decks on the famous luxury liner he had a small part in designing. Bainbridge explores the class divisions of the time through a modern lens, faithfully recreating what life was like for every level of society on the ship. When the time comes for Titanic to sink—as she must—Morgan’s experiences leap to the forefront, and he confronts the collapse of society in miniature. The rules get tossed aside, and human nature asserts itself as all artifice is stripped away, leaving a singular look at a fictional human ensnared in a very real, very terrifying moment in history.