Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you are trying to make your music part of that history. You're not ahistorical. In the same way, I think, if you write now, you are writing in the historical context of what the novel has been and what possibilities it has revealed.
Novels taught me that history is dramatic. I wanted my students to know that, too.
The pull of history has been a strong theme in my life as a novelist.
We've all faced the charge that our novels are history lite, and to some extent, that's true. Yet for some, historical fiction is a way into reading history proper.
Some novelists want to give people in history a voice because they have been denied it in the past.
You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.
Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.
I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.
Histories are to educate so that we understand better for ourselves and for motivation.
I like to write books where I get a question on the radio, and I don't have an answer for it.