Challenge Complete: Historical Fiction

After mystery, my next love is Historical Fiction. Thus, I am very glad to have finished the Historical Fiction challenge @ Historical Tapestry. I aimed to be a Victorian Reader i.e to read 5 historical novels. Well, I have successfully completed the challenge. Here are the books read:

1. Mari by Easterine Kire

This is the story of a forgotten war, the Battle of Kohima, called the ‘Stalingrad of the East’.

2. The Last Musha’irah of Dehli by Mirza Farhatullah Baig

The narrator organises a poetic symposium at the time of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’. Not only do luminaries like Mirza Ghalib, Ustaad Zauk, and Hakim Momin grace the occasion, it gives the author the perfect opportunity to show the fading culture of a city.

3. Derby Day: A Victorian Mystery by D.J. Taylor
Many fortunes ride on Tiberius on the day of the derby.

4. The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer

Napoleon’s agents scout the countryside in Regency England even as girls move out of their homes to look for jobs.

5. The Sunday I Became World Champion by F.C. Delius

Post WWII, Germany has lost confidence in itself and then on a magical Sunday it wins the Football World Cup…

6. The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell

A trail of blood leads from a sleepy hamlet in Sweden to the Chinese city of Beijing via the US and brings in its wake a past tale of exploitation, of indentured labourers from China being sold in markets and living in inhuman conditions.

7. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

The author recounts the heady days of the gold rush in California in this prize-winning Western.

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I also read two books depicting two significant epochs in the history of Germany. Mr. Norris Changes Trains which is set in the last days of the Weimar Republic and Lenz which is about the disillusionment that set in post the Student movement of the sixties. But since these were written in the years immediately after the time- period described with the authors having lived through those times, I don’t know whether these can be considered historical fiction.

I aim to sign up for the 2014 edition of the challenge too.