Around the World in 8 Historical Fiction Books

As the daughter of a rich planter and an enslaved woman, Sylvie de Rosier is able to enjoy the comforts of a lady in 1791 Saint-Domingue society, though she’s never fully accepted by the island elites. As a rebellion sets off the Haitian Revolution, Sylvie and her brother flee to Paris, unwittingly moving from one society in turmoil to another. There, she catches the eye of Robespierre, who sees in her race and her abandonment of her aristocratic roots a perfect example of his ideals. But as Sylvie watches another deadly empire rising in France during the Reign of Terror, she is torn between Robespierre’s ideology and the love and freedom of thought she has found in another.

A Black couple fleeing persecution in 1960s America travel to Ghana where they hope to start a new life without the threat of an FBI agent constantly on their trail. But the country is in a state of political turmoil, and what Melvin and Bernadette hope will be their safe haven soon becomes a place of chaos, where their own relationship begins to crumble. The story is an intimate look into the lives of this couple as well as a tale at the intersection of the American Civil Right’s Movement and postcolonial West Africa.

The story of a nation is told through three generations of families on the banks of the Zambezi River. A single mistake entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy that will ripple throughout the generations in this sweeping novel of past, present, and future that blends fact with fiction and truth with magic.

Yitian has been estranged from his family for years when he gets an urgent phone call from his mother telling him his father has disappeared from their rural Chinese village. Struggling to navigate China’s impenetrable bureaucracy as an American outsider and blindsided by his mother’s secrecy, Yitian has to call on the help of a childhood friend to try to discover how his father’s past during the Cultural Revolution could be connected to his disappearance today.

Goh Junja is trying to survive as the latest in a long line of haenyeo–deep sea diving women–as Korea struggles following the Japanese occupation of World War II. The new political climate, with an influx of U.S. troops and a creeping paranoia of communism, is almost as treacherous. Still grieving her mother’s death, Junja can scarcely keep up, but when her lover is accused of harboring communist sentiments, she must finally learn to adapt to the ever-changing world around her.

Following the bombing of Pear Harbor, racial tension grows in Vancouver, British Columbia. The RCMP round up “suspicious” characters and the creation of internment camps in the interior is only months away. Narrated by a young reporter for the New Canadian, the only Japanese-Canadian newspaper allowed to continue publishing during the war, and told from the perspective of three people in Vancouver’s Japanese community, The Three Pleasures is a depicts a painful period of Canada’s history.

Lilith, born into slavery in eighteenth century Jamaica, becomes a powerful force among the Night Women, a group planning to revolt against the plantation owners enslaving them. But on a sugar plantation rife with secrets, a powerful woman like Lilith won’t go unnoticed. And as she pushes against the bounds of what’s expected–and allowed–for an enslaved woman, she risks becoming a weak link in this desperate conspiracy for freedom.

In 1990s Colombia, a sheltered girl safe in a gated community outside of Pablo Escobar’s reach becomes determined to befriend her family’s new maid, Petrona, whose life has not been so easy. But both Chula and Petrona are caught up in a web of secrets, and as the conflict in Bogotá escalates, they will have to choose between sacrifice and betrayal.