There’s a lot of be said around the topics of genre and the way these descriptors are used to sell a book, sometime more than telling us what the book is. Today we’re back on the main feed with another Modern Readers episode, and this time we’re focusing our discussion around historical and literary historical fiction.
Love the pairings! The Ishiguro is a curious one... It reminds me that I read something about Kazuo Ishiguro being unsatisfied with the film version because it treated the novel like a period drama. He felt it was not supposed to be read as a book about the historical period, but an analogy for thinking about universal truths and experience. Which I guess might be what makes it "literary historical fiction"? In the same way, Hamnet is about the universality of grief, and Wolf Hall is about... well many many things, but more than the Tudor court.
Love the pairings! The Ishiguro is a curious one... It reminds me that I read something about Kazuo Ishiguro being unsatisfied with the film version because it treated the novel like a period drama. He felt it was not supposed to be read as a book about the historical period, but an analogy for thinking about universal truths and experience. Which I guess might be what makes it "literary historical fiction"? In the same way, Hamnet is about the universality of grief, and Wolf Hall is about... well many many things, but more than the Tudor court.