Historical genre books (473)


411.

The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese/half-American courtesan who deals in seduction and illusion in Shanghai, struggles to find her place in the world, while her mother, Lucia, tries to make sense of the choices she has made and the men who have shaped her. 750,000 first printing.

412.

The Vikings by Else Roesdahl EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / Denmark flag Denmark
Description:
Far from being just 'wild, barbaric, axe-wielding pirates', the Vikings created complex social institutions, oversaw the coming of Christianity to Scandinavia and made a major impact on European history through trade, travel and far-flung consolidation. This encyclopedic study brings together the latest research on Viking art, burial customs, class divisions, jewellery, kingship, poetry and family life. The result is a rich and compelling picture of an extraordinary civilisation.

413.

The Way of the World by Nicolas Bouvier EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / Switzerland flag Switzerland
Description:
Travel writing, reflects convincingly on the meaning of the experience.

414.

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf EN

Rating: 4 (5 votes)
Country: Asia / Malaysia flag Malaysia
Description:
Amidst the Chinese-Malay conflict in Kuala Lumpur in 1969, sixteen-year-old Melati must overcome prejudice, violence, and her own OCD to find her way back to her mother.

415.

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera EN

Rating: 4 (5 votes)
Description:
Eight-year-old Kahu, a member of the Maori tribe of New Zealand, fights to prove her love, her leadership, and her destiny when hundreds of whales beach themselves and threaten the future of the Maori tribe. Basis for the 2003 feature film.

416.

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
Winner of the 1990 Independent Award for foreign fiction, this book tells the story of a young Italian scholar who is captured by pirates. Put up for auction at the Istanbul slave market, he is bought by a Turkish servant, eager to learn about scientific and intellectual advances in the West.

417.

The Wife's Tale : A Personal History by Aida Edemariam EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Africa / Ethiopia flag Ethiopia
Description:
A Finalist for The Governor General’s Award for Nonfiction in Canada In this indelible memoir that recalls the life of her remarkable ninety-five-year old grandmother, Guardian journalist Aida Edemariam tells the story of modern Ethiopia—a nation that would undergo a tumultuous transformation from feudalism to monarchy to Marxist revolution to democracy, over the course of one century. Born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar in about 1916, Yetemegnu was married and had given birth before she turned fifteen. As the daughter of a socially prominent man, she also offered her husband, a poor... continue

418.

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
Angrboda's story begins where most witch's tales end: with a burning. A punishment from Odin for refusing to give him knowledge of the future, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into a remote forest. There she is found by a man Loki, and her initial distrust grows into a deep and abiding love. Their union produces three unusual children, each with a secret destiny, who she is keen to raise at the hidden from Odin's all-seeing eye. But as Angrboda slowly recovers her prophetic powers, she learns that her blissful life - and possibly all of existence - is in danger.

419.

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue EN

Rating: 3.7 (2 votes)
Country: Europe / Ireland flag Ireland
Description:
A major film from the makers of Normal People and Room, starring Florence Pugh and streaming on Netflix. 'An old-school page turner with crackling intensity' Stephen King 'Powerful, compulsively readable' Irish Times Eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story . . . Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, Emma Donoghue's The Wonder – inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth – is a ps... continue

420.

The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography by Stefan Zweig EN

0 Ratings
Country: Europe / Austria flag Austria
Description:
Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was a poet, novelist, and dramatist, but it was his biographies that expressed his full genius, recreating for his international audience the Elizabethan age, the French Revolution, the great days of voyages and discoveries. In this autobiography he holds the mirror up to his own age, telling the story of a generation that "was loaded down with a burden of fate as was hardly any other in the course of history." Zweig attracted to himself the best minds and loftiest souls of his era: Freud, Yeats, Borgese, Pirandello, Gorky, Ravel, Joyce, Toscanini, Jane Addams, Anatole... continue