Historical Fiction

Thomas Wolfe’s largely autobiographical novel Look Homeward, Angel was published in 1929. A coming-of-age story divided into three parts, Wolfe’s novel chronicles the life of the Gant family and, particularly, the growth of Eugene Gant, a character whom critics consider an extension of Wolfe. Wolfe, like Eugene, was born in the year 1900. The lives of Eugene’s parents mirror the lives of Wolfe’s own parents, who were also named William Oliver and Eliza. Look Homeward... Read Look Homeward, Angel Summary

Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood is a fictionalized autobiography and bildungsroman by author and literature professor Richard E. Kim (1932-2009). Originally published in 1970, Lost Names is a collection of seven scenes from Kim’s life from 1932 (birth) to 1945 (age 13). Kim examines the Korean experience of Japanese colonial occupation through the eyes of himself as a child. Though it is autobiographical, Kim was ambivalent about its status as fiction or nonfiction:... Read Lost Names Summary

Love in the Time of Cholera is a classic work of literary fiction by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. It was published in Spanish in 1985 and translated into English in 1988 by Edith Grossman. The novel was adapted into a film in 2007, which was nominated for several awards including an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Plot SummaryLove in the Time of Cholera is set in... Read Love in the Time of Cholera Summary

American author Louise Erdrich’s debut novel, Love Medicine, was first published in 1984 to critical acclaim. A bestseller and winner of the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the novel follows three generations of members from five Ojibwe families in Minnesota and North Dakota. Lyrical, metaphorical, and a complex exploration of oppression, joy, and family, the novel is both a record of history and an analysis of love. Blending the genres of historical... Read Love Medicine Summary

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Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare’s most celebrated plays. Classified as a tragedy and thought to be performed for the first time in 1606, it tells the story of a Scottish nobleman who becomes obsessed with power and is driven mad by guilt.Plot SummaryThe play opens with three witches, who make plans to meet again. In a military camp, King Duncan of Scotland hears the news of his generals’ success. Macbeth and Banquo have defeated... Read Macbeth Summary

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Manhattan Beach is a 2017 novel by American writer Jennifer Egan. Born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco, Egan, now a New Yorker, did much of her research for the novel at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Using oral histories, photographs, and other supporting documents, she reconstructed the vibrant world of the wartime Brooklyn Naval Yard and Coney Island. The novel won the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, was long-listed for the... Read Manhattan Beach Summary

Man of La Mancha, by Dale Wasserman, Joe Darion, and Mitch Leigh, took the world of musical theater by storm when it premiered in 1965. This story of Miguel de Cervantes and his comic knight, Don Quixote, won five Tony Awards as well as the Drama Critics Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Variety Drama Critics Award, and the Saturday Review Award. The original production ran for over 2,000 performances and remains popular... Read Man of La Mancha Summary

August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom premiered in 1984, as part of Wilson’s Century Cycle, also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle. The Century Cycle is a series of ten plays, each exploring the black experience in the United States during a different decade of the 20th century. Although Wilson wrote a few other plays, the Century Cycle constitutes the bulk of his life’s work as one of the most significant African-American playwrights in American theatre... Read Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Summary

March is mostly told from the perspective of Mr. March, a military chaplain assisting Union soldiers during the Civil War. In the opening sequence, Mr. March tries to save the life of a wounded soldier but fails. This marks the first death for which he holds himself responsible, providing a foundation for his increasingly guilty conscience. His wartime assignment brings him to a plantation that he recognizes from his youth, sending him into a detailed flashback:... Read March Summary

Martin Eden is a 1909 novel by American author Jack London. Known for his stories of adventure and use of naturalism and realism, London authored more than 50 books, including Call of the Wild and White Fang, before his untimely death at age 40. London wrote Martin Eden at the height of his literary career, inspired by his own disillusionment with fame and literary critics. Although the protagonist’s individualist principles are at odds with London’s... Read Martin Eden Summary

Published in 1899 and written by author Frank Norris, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco is a novel in the tradition of Naturalism, a literary movement that explores how people are at the mercy of forces, internal and external, that dictate their behavior and destiny. In McTeague, despite their attempts to fight these forces, even fundamentally good people are brought to their destruction by their nature, their environment, and their social class. As their tenuous... Read McTeague Summary

Medicine River, originally published in 1989, is a novel by Thomas King, one of the most prolific Indigenous American writers of the 20th century. The title of the novel takes its name from the town in Alberta, Canada, where the characters live, near a Blackfoot reservation. Their stories, as told by protagonist Will, delve into themes such as Friendship and Forbearance within the frame of Life in an Alberta Blackfoot Community. As Will tells these... Read Medicine River Summary

Richard Wagamese’s Medicine Walk (2014) follows 16-year-old Franklin Starlight on his journey to find the perfect burial site for his terminally ill father, Eldon Starlight, a member of the Ojibway tribe of Indigenous peoples. Frank carries Eldon on horseback into the wilderness where Eldon wishes to die in the traditional manner of Ojibway warriors—facing East so that he can see the last sunrise of his last day on earth.Eldon abandoned Franklin, who goes by Frank... Read Medicine Walk Summary

Memoirs of a Geisha is a novel by American author Arthur Golden narrated by a Japanese woman named Sayuri. The story begins when Sayuri (then known as Chiyo) is a child, living in a fishing village with her parents and sister, Satsu. Her modest lifestyle is turned on its head when she meets a man named Mr. Tanaka, who not only runs a fishing company but, unbeknownst to her, also procures girls to work as... Read Memoirs of a Geisha Summary

Book Details & Major ThemesMexican Gothic is a horror novel by Mexican Canadian writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Set in 1950s Mexico City and the burned-out mining town of El Triunfo, the novel is a horror-tinged thriller that explores the themes of The Feminist Gothic, Colonialism and Imperialism in Mexico, and Death, Corruption and Objectification in the House of Doyle.The novel centers on Noemí Taboada, a socialite with aspirations to become an anthropologist who goes to El... Read Mexican Gothic Summary

Charles S. Johnson’s Middle Passage, winner of the National Book Award for fiction, was published in 1990. Set in New Orleans and on the Atlantic Ocean, the historical novel centers on the disastrous voyage of the slave ship Republic.In 1830, Rutherford Calhoun, an ex-slave from Illinois, stows away on the Republic to avoid debts he owes to underworld boss Papa Zeringue or marriage to Isadora Bailey, who has offered to pay off those debts. Once... Read Middle Passage Summary

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Montana 1948 is set in a small town on the very northeastern edge of the state of Montana. The events described are experienced through the eyes of David Hayden, a twelve-year-old boy. In a prologue, he describes several images he remembers vividly from forty years ago. Years later, after both of his parents are dead, David decides to tell the whole story of the tragedy he witnessed as a boy. At the time of David’s narrative, he lives... Read Montana 1948 Summary