Talk Like A Pirate Day is one of the internet’s favourite holidays. But who were these infamous seafarers and how did they really talk?
Articles on Historical fiction
Displaying 1 - 20 of 46 articles
Ruth Park’s classic asks us to inhabit the past as a real place – just as 14-year-old Abigail does, when she’s transported from 1980 to 1873, in Sydney’s The Rocks.
Land reasserts the Gaelic language and culture in opposition to the culture of the British colonisers, but relies on simplistic characterisations.
Francesca de Tores’ Cast Away or, the Surprising Adventures of Alexander Selkirk is a timely consideration of human resilience and resourcefulness.
The novel is filled with distinctive characters, shady dealings, women of moral ambiguity and heroes and villains alike.
A vivid Torres Strait Islander story emphasising the tragedy of colonial rule and a slow-burning postwar tale of a white woman in Japan are engaging historical novels.
Laura Elvery’s novel, Nightingale, invites us to see the legendary nurse not as a symbol, but as a person shaped by illness, desire, pain and time.
When Georgia Rose Phillips’ inner poet takes centre stage, The Bearcat rises to great heights. But the novel contains some anachronisms.
The Peruvian Nobel prize-winning author was intensely committed to his craft.
A novel about first-wave feminists cleverly critiques the movement’s privilege. The first fiction from Nakkiah Lui’s imprint highlights uncomfortable truths. And a debut about teen girls is ‘too naive’.
Gail Jones has written a richly evocative novel that warrants attention, both for its fascinating subject-matter and for its outstanding writerly qualities.
Leaving out the history of Napoléon’s brutal subjugation of Haiti is akin to making a movie about Hitler without mentioning the Holocaust.
This well-researched book brings to life the odd case of Sir Roger Tichborne and those around him.
Family memoir and reimagined history dovetail beautifully in Kate Grenville’s latest novel.
Christopher Nolan’s film is the latest of many portrayals of the famous theoretical physicist. Here are five of the most intriguing.
Six of the best books from 2023 to read this summer.
Tara Calaby’s novel peeps into the interior lives of women in a 19th-century asylum and uses her historical imagination to generate new knowledge.
Shaka iLembe hits TV screens on 18 June. The Zulu leader has never been portrayed as a real man - hopefully this time he will be.
Michael Meehan’s An Ungrateful Instrument is a vivid, lively novel drawing on the history of French music.
Salonika Burning, set on the first world war’s eastern front, grapples with the question of how to represent the loss and absurdity of war.
Top contributors
-
Adjunct Researcher, English and Writing, University of Tasmania
-
Associate Professor, English and Creative Writing, Edith Cowan University
-
Lecturer in Early Modern Literature, Bangor University
-
DCA candidate, University of Technology Sydney
-
Senior Lecturer in Egyptology, University of Manchester
-
Associate Professor in British Colonial History, University of Leeds
-
PhD Candidate, University of the Witwatersrand
-
Associate Professor in History of Art, University of Nottingham
-
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of New England
-
Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of York
-
Lecturer, University of Portsmouth
-
PhD candidate, Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool
-
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Literature, University of Liverpool
-
Kidman Chair in Australian Studies and Director, JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, Adelaide University
-
Honorary Associate in Creative Writing, The Open University