Why I Write Historical Fiction

 Why Write Historical Fiction?

As the author of nineteen historical novels, I am often asked why I write historical fiction. It is an intriguing question, so I decided to put this question to other historical novelists, and see what they had to say. Over the next four and a half-months, I will share their answers in this space. I hope my readers enjoying meeting these different writers as much as I did! But first, my personal answer to the question.

 

I adopted the motto "Understanding Ourselves by Understanding the Past" because I believe an understanding of history is important to an understanding of the human condition today. It is not possible to solve any problem without knowing the contributing factors or the background of the players and the sequence of events that led to a specific situation. Israel cannot be understood without knowledge of the Holocaust. The conflict between Ukraine and Russia is inexplicable without knowing what happened in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. In short, history is vital to understanding the world today.

 

This is the reason I studied history. I obtained an PhD in modern history from the University of Hamburg with a ground-breaking dissertation on a leading member of the German Resistance to Hitler. Since then, I have written five other history books, which have been favorably received by fellow scholars. But I was not satisfied.

 

Objective, scholarly history provides facts, statistics, data, evidence, verifiable quotes, information and analysis. Well-written history can bring history back to life and help us experience historical events. It can be thrilling, moving, and inspiring. Yet there are also many things good, academic history cannot do because history is tied to evidence. 

 

Historical evidence may come in the form of archaeological and pathological findings or through written and photo records including court documents, letters and diaries, inventories, ship manifests, burial registers and the like. But evidence like that is often lacking, lost to "the ravages of time." Indeed the overwhelming majority of what forms the facts of history have been destroyed over time -- in natural disasters like earthquakes, fires, and floods or through human action from war, economic development, and simply 'cleaning out the old shed.'

 

Where evidence is lacking, historians can put forth hypotheses or suggest plausible explanations. However, serious historians usually offer multiple theses for any unusual development or dubious event.  Some aspects of history are, however, particularly elusive. The motives of humans, for example, cannot always be imputed from their actions -- or their words. Memoirs and even diaries are notoriously deceptive. In consequence, the farther we go back in time, the more imperfect and imprecise the historical record becomes. Like a sphinx eroded by three thousand years of desert sandstorms, the historical record often lacks clarity and color and details. Yet without such details, most images are not attractive to humans. 

 

Historical fiction, on the other hand, can go beyond the historical record. It can "connect the dots" and extrapolate beyond the point where credible historians dare to go. A novelist can offer an interpretation of historical events and characters that completes the imperfect image left by the remaining evidence. It can build upon the eroded remnants and restore a bright, vivid and vibrant image of the past. 

 

Let me take a concrete example from my own biography. At the age of four, I visited the Colosseum in Rome. The tour guide could explain the history in great detail, but my father triggered my imagination with a single fact: "This is where they fed the Christians to the lions." Now, a scholarly history of the Colosseum can probably tell us the exact date when this practice started and ended. It can probably tell us how many Christians died, possibly the names of many. It may be able to cite individual cases in which the Emperor intervened to save one or another Christian. It might tell us where the lions came from and how they were transported to Rome. But it cannot and would not tell us what it felt like to be a fifteen-year-old girl who is condemned along with her family to face the lions before a crowd of spectators. It cannot tell us the thoughts of a lion handler, angry to see his noble lions abused and starved until they are turned in to man-eaters. It would not describe being in the stands in the heat, buying snacks from the vendors and listening to social gossip, while people are torn apart by wild beasts on the sand in the arena. A novel about the Colosseum can reach us at an emotional level in a way that no history book can.

Personally, I have been most inspired to write novels about eras, societies or events that are popularly misunderstood. That is, when I realize there is a major disconnect between what serious history tells us about someplace or some age and what most people believe, then I get inspired to "correct the record." My novels on Sparta and the crusader states grew out of this need to make the historical facts as uncovered by meticulous scholarly research more accessible to people who couldn't be bothered reading history books. Likewise, my novel Moral Fibre was inspired by misconceptions about the RAF's procedures and polices regarding men who  "lacked of moral fibre."

 

For more about my novels on Ancient Sparta visit: https://www.helenapschrader.com/ancient-sparta.html

For more about my crusades era novels visit:  https://www.helenapschrader.com/crusades-era.html

 

For more about books set in WWII or about military aviation see: https://www.helenapschrader.com/aviation.html