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Suggestions for October BOTM: Historical Fiction
- Thread starter Polly Parrot
- Start date
bedtimereader
New Member
Two Brothers by Ben Elton?
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Keep those suggestions coming!
Keep those suggestions coming!
Meadow337
Former Moderator
When The Emperor Was Divine - Julie Otsuke
The Buddha in the Attic
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award For Fiction
National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book
I laughed, I cried, I got angry, I felt happy and sad, then happy again. An incredibly moving, and uniquely written tale. It is written in the first person plural in an almost stream of consciousness style, broken into various life events 'children', 'marriage', 'work' just as examples.
The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
Although this book covers the experience of Hungarian Jews during WW2 it was the story of the architecture that really spoke to me. After all isn't how we build the houses we live in an expression of ourselves?
And to balance the view point of Japanese in WW2
The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twan Eng
On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert.
In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines.
Honestly this book is one of the most genuinely moving stories I have read. That is until I read her first book:In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines.
The Buddha in the Attic
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award For Fiction
National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book
A gorgeous novel by the celebrated author of When the Emperor Was Divine that tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago. In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of these women, from their arduous journeys by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; from their experiences raising children who would later reject their culture and language, to the deracinating arrival of war. Once again, Julie Otsuka has written a spellbinding novel about identity and loyalty, and what it means to be an American in uncertain times.
I laughed, I cried, I got angry, I felt happy and sad, then happy again. An incredibly moving, and uniquely written tale. It is written in the first person plural in an almost stream of consciousness style, broken into various life events 'children', 'marriage', 'work' just as examples.
The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he promised to deliver. But when he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter's recipient, he becomes privy to a secret that will alter the course of his—and his family's—history.
From the small Hungarian town of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in labor camps, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history's darkest hour.
From the small Hungarian town of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in labor camps, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history's darkest hour.
Although this book covers the experience of Hungarian Jews during WW2 it was the story of the architecture that really spoke to me. After all isn't how we build the houses we live in an expression of ourselves?
And to balance the view point of Japanese in WW2
The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twan Eng
Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden for herself.
As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?
I'm about halfway through and its a beautifully written book, as carefully constructed and as finely nuanced as a Japanese garden.As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?
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