Historical Fiction

Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation details the first decade of the lives of Kimberley Chang and her mother after they emigrate from Hong Kong to New York City in the 1980s. The novel is told from Kim's perspective. Each chapter corresponds roughly to a year of her life, beginning in early elementary school and ending shortly before Kim goes to college. Kim struggles as she attempts to balance her doublelife as a brilliant student during... Read Girl In Translation Summary

In Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, the subject of Johannes Vermeer’s most famous painting is brought to life. The “girl with the pearl earring” is Griet, the Vermeers’ housemaid, hired in particular to clean Vermeer’s studio without disturbing its order. For this task, Vermeer needs someone who is exceedingly careful and invested in his artistic endeavors, beyond the promise of (meager) payment. Griet is fascinated by Vermeer’s way of seeing the world, his... Read Girl With a Pearl Earring Summary

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Going After Cacciato, by Tim O’Brien, is a novel about a young soldier’s experiences in the Vietnam War. However, as the New York Times noted in its initial review of the novel upon its publication in 1978, “call[ing] Going After Cacciato a novel about war is like calling Moby Dick a novel about whales.” The novel does not simply recount the events of the war; it dives into the inner life of its protagonist, Paul... Read Going After Cacciato Summary

Christopher Isherwood’s novel, Goodbye to Berlin, was first published in 1939. The novel’s narrator, who is also named Christopher Isherwood, recounts his experiences living in Berlin, Germany from 1929 to 1933. Isherwood focuses the novel on the relationships he has with his friends and acquaintances and explores both the beautiful and unseemly parts of the city he calls home, all while the rise of Nazi influence grows steadily in the background.Goodbye to Berlin’s chapters are... Read Goodbye To Berlin Summary

“Good Country People” first appeared in Flannery O’Connor’s short story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find in 1955 and is widely regarded as an exemplary work of Southern Gothic literature. Like many of O’Connor’s works, “Good Country People” contains a critique of the American South and religious hypocrisy rooted in O’Connor’s worldview informed by her Catholic faith. This study guide uses the 1988 Library of America edition of Flannery O’Connor’s Collected Works. The... Read Good Country People Summary

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“Gooseberries,” by Russian author Anton Chekhov, is a short story that uses symbolism, subtlety, irony, and keen observation of human behavior to explore themes of the quest for happiness, the meaning of life, social expectations, privilege, and social equality. Written in mid-1898, the story is the second in what was later referred to as The Little Trilogy, together with “The Man in the Case” and “About Love.” All three stories explore the definitions of happiness... Read Gooseberries Summary

Great Expectations is the 13th novel written by Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial in Dickens’s periodical, All the Year Round, Great Expectations, and Chapman and Hall published the novelized version in October of 1861. The novel is widely considered to be a classic example of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age genre, and it has been adapted into numerous plays, films, and television series. Other works by Dickens include Nicholas Nickleby, The Old... Read Great Expectations Summary

Published in 2011, Half-Blood Blues is the second book by Esi Edugyan, a black Canadian author. The novel won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2012 and was also shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction. As historical fiction, the story examines the lives of a diverse group of jazz musicians during World War II as they balance personal jealousies with the need to help each other amid mounting... Read Half-Blood Blues Summary

Jeannette Walls describes her book Half Broke Horses as a “True-Life Novel,” as it describes the life of her real-life grandmother Lily Casey Smith. The book is told in the first person from the perspective of Lily as she grows up in the harsh desert southwest. While the book is classified as a novel (since Walls was unable to back-up all of the facts about Smith’s life), it reads more like a memoir. Walls begins... Read Half Broke Horses Summary

Chimamanda Adichie’s second book, Half of a Yellow Sun, is set during the Nigerian Civil War that tragically occurred in her home country during the 1960s. The story masterfully revolves around an intricate web of shifting viewpoints, each of which centers around one of the novel’s five main characters: Ugwu, Odenigbo, Olanna, Kainene, and Richard. All of these characters find themselves affiliated with the Biafran rebels of the war, and this affiliation eventually has consequences... Read Half of a Yellow Sun Summary

First performed in 1609, Hamlet is a classic play and one of the best known and most influential works of the playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616). This summary refers to the 2001 Pelican edition of the play.Plot SummaryOn a dark night, sentinels see a ghost stalking the battlements of Elsinore Castle, the royal seat of Denmark. It is the dead king, who has returned to tell his son Hamlet to avenge him. He was murdered by... Read Hamlet Summary

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Hard Times is an 1854 novel by Charles Dickens. The 10th book of Dickens’s career, Hard Times is notably shorter than his other works and is one of the few that isn’t set in London. Instead, Hard Times provides a satirical examination of the fictitious industrial city of Coketown, England. The novel has been adapted numerous times for radio, television, theater, and film.This guide is written using an eBook edition of the 2003 Penguin Classics... Read Hard Times Summary

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novel by Joseph Conrad detailing the story of Marlow, the captain of a steamboat, who travels up the Congo River to find a man named Kurtz. The novel is set in what was then known as the Congo Free State, which was owned by King Leopold II of Belgium. It is loosely based on Conrad's own experiences of working for a Belgian trading company. While Conrad partially intended to... Read Heart of Darkness Summary

His Bloody Project: A Historical Thriller, written by Graeme Macrae Burnet, is a historical crime novel originally published in 2015. Presented as a series of fictionalized historical documents compiled by Burnet, the story concerns a gruesome triple homicide perpetrated by Roderick Macrae, a young farmer living in the Scottish Highland in the mid-19th century. Told through a number of often-contradictory perspectives, the novel deals with the nature of free will, the origins of criminal behavior... Read His Bloody Project Summary

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First published in 2012, Home, written by Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, tells the story of Frank Money, a 24-year-old black Korean War veteran who is summoned to Atlanta, Georgia, to rescue his sister, Cee. He receives a note that reads “‘Come fast. She be dead if you tarry’” (8) from an unknown woman. The main story of the novel begins with Frank’s escape from a hospital’s mental health ward. He was put in the ward... Read Home Summary

Homegoing is a historical fiction novel by Yaa Gyasi, a Ghanaian-American novelist born in 1989. Homegoing was published in 2016 and was awarded the 2017 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the 2016 John Leonard Prize for outstanding debut novel, and the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award in 2016. Written in the tradition of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976), Gyasi tells the story of one 18th-century Akan family, tracking it across... Read Homegoing Summary