Historical fiction genre books (1181)
801.
The Day the Leader Was Killed by Naguib Mahfouz EN
EgyptDescription:
From the Nobel Prize laureate and author of the acclaimed Cairo Trilogy, a beguiling and artfully compact novel set in Sadat's Egypt. The time is 1981, Anwar al-Sadat is president, and Egypt is lurching into the modern world. Set against this backdrop, The Day the Leader Was Killed relates the tale of a middle-class Cairene family. Rich with irony and infused with political undertones, the story is narrated alternately by the pious and mischievous family patriarch Muhtashimi Zayed, his hapless grandson Elwan, and Elwan's headstrong and beautiful fiancee Randa. The novel reaches its climax with... continue
802.
The Days of the Rainbow : A Novel by Antonio Skarmeta EN
Country: South America / 
Chile
Chile
Description:
A novel based on the true story of how an advertising campaign caused the fall of Chile’s dictator, General Pinochet Nico, the son of a noted Chilean philosophy professor, witnesses his father’s arrest while he is teaching a class. Bettini, the father of Nico’s best friend, is a leftist advertising executive who has been blacklisted and is out of work after having been imprisoned and tortured by Pinochet’s police. This doesn’t stop the ministry of the interior from asking Bettini, who is the best in the business, to come up with a plan for the upcoming referendum designed to say “yes” to Pinoc... continue
803.
The Dead by Christian Kracht EN
Country: Europe / 
Switzerland
Switzerland
Description:
"Christian Kracht mines the feverish film culture of pre-World War II Germany and Japan for a Gothic tale of global conspiracy, personal loss, and historical entanglements large and small." --
804.
The Dead Wander in the Desert by Rollan Seisenbayev EN
Country: Asia / 
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Description:
From Kazakhstan's most celebrated author comes his powerful and timely English-language debut about a fisherman's struggle to save the Aral Sea, and its way of life, from man-made ecological disaster. Unfolding on the vast grasslands of the steppes of Kazakhstan before its independence from the USSR, this haunting novel limns the struggles of the world through the eyes of Nasyr, a simple fisherman and village elder, and his resolute son, Kakharman. Both father and son confront the terrible future that is coming to the poisoned Aral Sea. Once the fourth-largest lake on earth, it is now an impen... continue
805.
The Death of Comrade President by ALAIN. MABANCKOU EN
CongoDescription:
In Pointe-Noire, in the small neighbourhood of Voungou, on the family plot where young Michel lives with Maman Pauline and Papa Roger, life goes on. But Michel's everyday cares - lost grocery money, the whims of his parents' moods, their neighbours' squabbling, his endless daydreaming - are soon swept away by the wind of history. In March 1977, just before the arrival of the short rainy season, Comrade President Marien Ngouabi is brutally murdered in Brazzaville, and not even naïve Michel can remain untouched. Starting as a tender, wry portrait of an ordinary Congolese family, Alain Mabanckou ... continue
806.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy EN
RussiaDescription:
Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth? This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of ... continue
807.
The Desert and the Drum by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk EN
Country: Africa / 
Mauritania
Mauritania
Description:
"The Desert and the Drum reveals a hidden Bedouin world and what happens when its values clash with those of contemporary urban life. It was awarded the Ahmadou-Kourouma Prize in 2016 and is the first novel from Mauritania to be translated into English. Everything changes for Rayhana when foreigners with strange machines arrive to mine for metal near her Bedouin camp. One of them is the enigmatic Yahya. Her association with him leads to Rayhana to abandon all that she has ever known and flee alone to the city. But when her tribe discover she has stolen their sacred drum, they pursue her to exa... continue
808.
The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat EN
Country: North America / 
Haiti
Haiti
Description:
We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”--or torturer--s an unforgettable story of love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes wit... continue
809.
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years : A Novel by Shubnum Khan EN
Country: Africa / 
South Africa
South Africa
Description:
“A dark and heady dream of a book” (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate off the coast of South Africa. Nearly a century later, it stands in ruins: an isolated boardinghouse for eclectic misfits, seeking solely to disappear into the mansion’s dark corridors. Except for Sana. Unlike the others, she is curious and questioning and finds herself irresistibly drawn to the history of the mansion: To the eerie and forgotten East Wing, ho... continue
810.
The Dogs and the Wolves by Irène Némirovsky EN
UkraineDescription:
"This wonderful, panoramic novel goes right back to Ir ne Nemirovsky s roots, sweeping the reader from the Jewish quarter of a Ukrainian city in the early years of the twentieth century to Paris in the twenties and thirties, and back again to eastern Europe in a snowy winter on the eve of war. At its heart is a tragic love, between Ada from the poor Jewish quarter and Harry, son of a rich financier. The dogs are the comfortable, assimilated rich Jews up on the hill, while the wolves, their distant cousins, struggle below in the ghetto. Ada grows up motherless, looked after first by her father,... continue