The Best Five Historical Novels Ever Written

If you are new to historical fiction, then this article gives you an insight into some of the best novels within this genre of fiction. The five novels described are chosen based on the author's own opinion, but should provide you with a guide to some of the best historical fiction available.

Review Of The End Of The Affair - By Graham Greene:
With The End of the Affair, Greene is able to speak to the collective human experience that in all of us there is a suffering victim desperately seeking meaning to life. To place the story during the World War 2, perhaps Greene was pointing to the faults in society, the senseless and apocalyptic power of war, which led to social wretchedness and the decay of the human spirit. Many of those who lived through this war had also witnessed the carnage of the first Great War.

Deconstructing William Shakespeare's Heroines in Literature:
Deconstruction is the method of looking at a subject or topic from a point of view as opposed to the popular view. The name mostly associated with this theory is Jacques Derrida. But here we will try to deconstruct the approach towards heroines by William Shakespeare.

James Joyce's Masterpiece, Ulysses - Persist With It to the Very End!:
So you have always wanted to read Ulysses. You've always wanted to climb the mountain that is Ulysses. Right! Then go ahead and do it. Go ahead and do it despite the difficulties.

Concede To The Madness:
Quite often injected into the works of nineteenth century female writers, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, are mad, diabolical heroines, frequently created in the authors' image, reflecting their own rebellion against and opposition towards the patriarchal system by which they are surrounded. The known life events of the female author virtually mirrors the life of the narrator depicted in "The Yellow Wallpaper." In her own words, Gilman states how a physician's diagnosis and treatment regime brought her "perilously close to losing [her] mind." Overtly spawned from this experience, "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written seven years later, in 1892.

The Representation of Gods and Goddesses in Homer's '' The Iliad'':
The Homerian epic, ''The Iliad'' is a historiographical narrative composed around 725BC which glorifies the Mycenian civilization of the late Bronze Age. It puts into perspective the Trojan War registering two points of view - one of the mortals and the other of the immortals. It draws its raw material from mythology and history; recapturing the belief-systems and culture of the Greek mainland notwithstanding its essence of orality.

The Age of Google, Facebook, Games, Downloads, and Other Distractions:
Neil Postman, the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, once observed that those who are vigilant against tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." R.F. Georgy comes along to offer us a chilling image of an age that is drowning in trivial distractions. In Notes from the Cafe, Georgy brings back Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground to remind us of the folly of believing we are swimming a positive course.

Okay So, You've Read Ayn Rand's Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged - Now What?:
Not long ago, I had talked to an acquaintance about various philosophical concepts, namely free-markets and Ayn Rand's comments and works. Indeed, I had also recommended a decent follow-up book of Ayn Rand's to read to compliment her most famous novels; Atlas Shrugged and Fountain Head. The book I recommended to also read was Anthem, which some say was her best work.