3 must-read books for lovers of historical fiction
CBC Books | Posted: January 5, 2024 7:13 PM | Last Updated: January 5, 2024
The Next Chapter columnist Talia Kliot shares her love for historical fiction
Ever since she was a little girl, Talia Kliot has loved reading historical fiction. Her love for the genre began with the beloved Dear Canada series for kids. Today, Kliot continues to be an avid reader and is an associate producer at CBC Books.
She joined The Next Chapter's Ali Hassan to offer three recommendations for fans of "literary time travel."
Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
Learned by Heart is a riveting account of the boarding school romance between Anne Lister, a brilliant and headstrong troublemaker, and Eliza Raine, an orphaned heiress banished from India to England. The novel draws on Lister's secret journal and extensive research to craft two long-buried stories.
Learned by Heart was shortlisted for the 2023 Writers' Trust Atwood Gibson Prize.
Donoghue is an Irish Canadian writer known for her novels Landing, Room, Frog Music, The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars and the children's book The Lotterys Plus One. Room was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Brie Larson.
Talia Kliot says: "It's a brilliantly crafted love story with really sharp and sparkling dialogue. It really gets into the shenanigans of boarding school, but also with deeper themes and really interesting historical context as well."
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
In the novel Let Us Descend, the story follows Annis, a young Black woman who is sold into enslavement by her white father, as she travels through states and slave markets to a sugar plantation in Louisiana. Through hellish and truthful depictions of American slavery, Annis is guided by the memories and stories of the African warriors and women in her lineage.
Jesmyn Ward is an American author and professor of English at Tulane University. Ward is the first woman and first Black person to win the National Book award twice, for her novels Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Talia Kliot says: "[The title is] actually taken from Dante's Inferno; I think because of the hellscapes and the horrible and painful descriptions that are throughout the book, it really does feel like you're descending into hell.
"But also the descriptions are so detailed! You also see the beauty of nature and of the landscape that she's walking through — and this terrible power and terrible beauty melding together."
The Jazz Club Spy by Roberta Rich
Roberta Rich's latest book is the historical thriller The Jazz Club Spy. Set during the 1930s, the novel follows Giddy Brodsky, a Jewish girl who makes a living serving cigarettes at a Manhattan jazz club called Sid's Palace. When she thinks she recognizes the man who burned her Russian village to the ground decades earlier, she agrees to become a spy. Betrayals and intrigue ensue as Giddy finds herself in the middle of a political conspiracy on the eve of the Second World War, and has to choose between justice and forgiveness.
Rich is a former lawyer and the bestselling author of a series of historical novels set in Venice in the 16th century that revolve around the life of a midwife. Her books include The Midwife of Venice, The Harem Midwife and A Trial in Venice.
Talia Kliot says: "My grandparents are both immigrants from Russia, Lithuania, all fleeing the same type of anti-semitism, some the Holocaust, some earlier anti-semitism. So for me, hearing the stories of their immigrant experience after that really was very similar to what I saw in the book and that really resonated and was an important experience that I like to see shared.
"Also on a lighter note, there's some really great Yiddish phrases included throughout the book, which I loved because my grandfather always tries to teach me little Yiddish phrases."
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