Category: Historical Fiction

The story of Australia’s first Japanese “war bride”

28/12/2023

AT THE FOOT OF THE CHERRY TREE
By Alli Parker

After surviving the Hiroshima bomb, Nobuko Sakuramoto, known as Cherry Parker, again defied the odds becoming the first Japanese “war bride” permitted into Australia, after four years of lobbying by her husband Gordon Parker. This is their real-life love story reimagined by author (and Cherry and Gordon's granddaughter) Alli Parker.

Published by Harper Collins 2023 | Historical fiction, Australian Author

Retrieving a lost life from the historical black box

13/11/2023

WIFEDOM: MRS ORWELL'S INVISIBLE LIFE
By Anna Funder

The result of author Anna Funder’s plunge into the historical “black box” of George Orwell's wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy is a biography quite unlike any I’ve ever read.

Published by Penguin, July 2023 | Fiction, Memoir, Australian Author

Power of words shine in brilliantly imagined slice of history

24/7/2023

Published by Affirm Press, March 2023 | Historical Fiction

THE BOOKBINDER OF JERICHO
By Pip Williams

A perfect companion to Pip Williams’ wildly successful debut, The Bookbinder of Jericho explores the power in words by weaving a brilliantly imagined story around a slice of very real history, with a cast of women who rise in the face of the brutal upheaval of World War One.

Titillating Hollywood tale

26/2/2023

Published by Simon & Schuster 2017 | Fiction

THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO
By Taylor Jenkins Reid

Splintering the mythical splendour of Hollywood’s golden age, this tale provides a titillating and entertaining (although, truth be told, not terribly challenging) exploration of the price of fame.

Small kindnesses triumph in this WWII epic

8/10/2022

Published by 4th Estate 2014 | Fiction

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
By Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize winning 2014 novel All The Light We Cannot See is a captivating story celebrating the small triumphs scattered among the tragedies experienced by many during the second world war.

Darwin shines in this Aussie allegorical quest

22/7/2022

ALL OUR SHIMMERING SKIES
By Trent Dalton

As young gravedigger Molly Hook’s odyssey unfolds, bleakness gives way to an almost mystical narrative, ripe with the comical, sensory, over-the-top feels for which Trent Dalton has become known.

Published by Fourth Estate, December 2020 | Fiction

Quirky, sensory thriller unveils power of scent

15/3/2022

PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER
By Patrick Suskind

A terrifyingly humorous and sinister examination of blind obsession, explored through the mind of a man who perceives the world not through vision but by smell.

Published by Penguin | 1985 | Historical Fiction

A stunning tale that will hook all word lovers

26/1/2022

THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS
By Pip Williams

In a wonderfully original debut, Pip Williams weaves a moving and brilliantly imagined fictional story around the very real case of a word quite literally lost as the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled.

Published by Affirm Press 2020 | Historical Fiction, Australian author

A lyrical love story entwined in an epic pilgrimage

24/10/2021

DEVOTION
by Hannah Kent

True to form, Hannah Kent’s intense, lyrical prose is utterly immersive in her new novel, Devotion, a love story entwined within a fascinating historical context.

Published by Pan Macmillan-Picador, October 2021 | Fiction, Australian, Women, Historical

The untold story of a colonial enigma

12/9/2021

A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES
by Kate Grenville

Kate Grenville has captured the imagined voice of enigmatic pastoralist Elizabeth Macarthur in a way that makes you rethink everything you may have learnt about colonial Sydney, in her new novel A Room Made of Leaves.

Published by Text Publishing, August 2021 | Historical Fiction, Australian, Women

what i've been reading