The Depiction Of History In Fiction And Non-fiction Novels

Is it possible to compare the depiction of history in fiction and non-fiction books? Yes, we can and we will be doing that in this article. It’s a true fact that the genre of historical novel is quite popular presently. And, although it for sure much more popular than the historical non-fiction books, still most people assume that historical novels represent a much lower standard for historical accuracy than typical non-fiction books.

I want to admit that in this article we are going to speak about historical fictions that are carefully crafted by authors in the terms of historical accuracy. Actually, we are not going to take into account some love stories that was put to a historical background to add some drama. If talking about historical fiction a see a novel which is highly accurate in regard to events, people, details, and circumstances of the period that is depicted in a book.

Today, there are numerous historical fiction books that are criticized simply because fictional elements are added to the story. Let’s find out can well-written historical fiction be equivalent in accuracy to non-fiction books? Despite the fact this question is quite uneasy, we will try to find the answer.

Generally, the historical non-fiction books are mostly personal view of the author on the vaguely written, contradictory, and incomplete documentation of past events. As a rule, the historians look for collaborative evidence from diaries, letters, and memoirs of the evidences of some historical actions in order to make their own conclusions and put them on paper. It should be noted that a large part of information given in historical non-fiction is simply an educated guess by the author. This implies that an author makes conclusions based on their interpretation of the available material.

To my mind we can’t say for sure that the information given in non-fiction books are more true to fact than that fictional aspects created by novelists. And how can the novelist be as close to real historical landmarks as possible? In general a good novelist who are dedicated to presenting a very realistic written picture of a by-gone era will definitely cope with this task. To do this a novelist has to apply strict criteria that there’s no evidence to the contrary regarding the imagined elements of the novel.

To make the long story short, I wan to admit that reading books is a necessary thing. Besides, it is really not that important whether you are reading fiction or non-fiction, historical novels or fantasy, Decision Points George Bush or Earth Book Jon Stewart. Reading broadens our consciousness, makes us educated.