Explore this recommended reading list from author and professor Caroline Weber. Her book Proust's Duchess was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. She is a professor of French and Comparative Literature at Barnard College within Columbia University.

"In his acceptance speech for the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature, Albert Camus stated that the writer is 'not in the service of those who make history, [but] of those who endure it.' For me, great historical fiction fulfills this mission better than perhaps any other genre. Restoring to the remote abstractions of the past all the immediacy, ordinariness, strangeness, pathos, humor, specificity, and universality, of lived experience, it brings us into a profound identification with the people who endured those moments in history." —Caroline Weber

 

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

One of the greatest novelists of all time presents this classical epic of the Napoleonic Wars and their effects on four Russian families, exploring themes of humanity and personal destiny.

 

 

 

 

Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Originally published to shocked reviews in 1932 France, a scathing literary critique of what the writer believed to be the poor judgment and hypocrisy of society follows the travels of petit-bourgeois anti-hero Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I and the African jungle to America and Paris.

 

 

 

 

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

The emperor Claudius tells of his life during the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula and the events that led to his rise to power in a classic novel reconstructing ancient Rome.

 

 

 

 

The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen

A slave to a wealthy Virginia family, Mary Bowser secretly joins the abolition movement to bring fugitive slaves to freedom—a cause that leads her to deceive even those who are closest to her.

 

 

 

 

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

Tending the wounded when her nation is invaded by Mussolini, an orphaned servant in 1935 Ethiopia, helps disguise a gentle peasant as their exiled emperor to rally her fellow women in the fight against fascism.

 

 

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Summaries provided via NYPL's catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through on each book title for more information.

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