Hi!
I'll try to be as concise and precise as I can. Sorry for the title, I struggled with that.
Basically, I'm really interested about the day-to-day life of people going through a particularly violent or complicated time in history (war, occupation, revolution…)
What I mean is, I'm not looking for a traditional history book about "life during the Great Depression" or such. Ideally it would be fiction, I can also go with biography, but I already read quite a lot about that, so I try to diversify.
I generally know about the historic facts, it's more about the life of someone, their story, linked to History, that I'm interested in.
I'd lean more into the mundane, "silly" little life of people just trying to exist (or survive) during a violent, complicated time.
When something much bigger than us happens, and there's not a lot that you can do (apart from fighting, or rioting, I know, but you see what I mean hopefully).
It can be contemporary or set in older history, from all around the world. I just want to be able to feel what they feel, and understand what happened in their lives, and in their heads, while they go through it as a nation, a community, a family.
Final note : I've already read some "classics" taking place during the 2nd World War (Anne Frank's journal, the Boy in Striped Pyjamas…), I'd like to expand and not be overly focused about this specific event.
Hope this is enough info, let me know what you think!
And thank you for your help!
by Kaalgary
5 Comments
Wild Swans – Jung Chang. I think this could be just what you need. You follow the author and her family, starting with her grandmother then her mother and finally Chang herself. A gripping journey through chinese history, from Chiang Kai Shek, through Mao an so on. It is a very good book if you ask me.
i’ve been really into this type of book lately. Have you read A Constellation of Vital Phenomena? It follows regular people during the Chechen wars – a doctor, a girl, just trying to survive while everything falls apart around them. The mundane mixed with the horrific hits exactly what you’re describing.
Some others that nail this feeling:
– The Book Thief (yeah its WW2 but from a different angle – Death narrating a girl’s life in Nazi Germany)
– Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Nigerian Civil War through the eyes of regular people
– The Kite Runner – Afghanistan before and after the Taliban
I keep a running list of historical fiction like this on Hypelist app because i always forget titles when people ask for recs. The everyday-life-during-chaos genre is weirdly specific but so good when done right
Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains
Immaculée Ilibagiza’s Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
Vin Chung’s Where the Wind Leads
Corrie Ten Boom’s Hiding Place
Brother Andrew’s God’s Smuggler
Beth Macy’s True Vine
Sigrid Undset’s Ida Elisabeth
Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter
Thought of one more:
The Emigrants by Johan Bojer
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about 13-year-old Theodore “Theo” Decker, who survives a terrorist bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother and subsequently steals a small, priceless Dutch painting, Carel Fabritius’s Goldfinch.