Historical Fiction

This paper analyzes the relationship between the politics of memory, austerity measures, the implications of neoliberalism, and the importance of collective agency in Brazil. The study analyzes how implementing austerity measures between 2016 and 2022 affected government spending on initiatives related to the country's memory of the dictatorship. The reduced funding from measures such as the Expanding Cap Amendment harmed several ongoing projects. The article discusses the broader impact of neoliberalism on memory through the perspective that neoliberal reasoning might be apathetic to collective memory, but, by doing so, it may become an incubator of authoritarian practices. Thus, collective agency and a broader role of civil society are cornerstones in transmitting collective memories of a violent past.

This paper explores the significant role of historical fiction as a form of cultural intervention, emphasizing its power to influence and reshape contemporary identities, collective memory, and societal values. Historical fiction, by creatively blending fact and imagination, offers readers an accessible and critical engagement with the past. This genre reconstructs historical events and challenges dominant historiographies and invites reinterpretation of marginalized voices and suppressed narratives. The study highlights how historical fiction functions beyond mere entertainment or escapism. It serves as a dynamic medium through which authors intervene in cultural discourse, questioning and deconstructing established historical accounts to expose complexities, contradictions, and silences in history. Through this process, historical fiction contributes to the shaping of collective memory, enabling societies to revisit and renegotiate their understanding of identity, heritage, and values. Furthermore, the paper underscores the pedagogical and sociopolitical implications of historical fiction, demonstrating how it fosters empathy, critical reflection, and social awareness among readers. Ultimately, historical fiction emerges as a powerful cultural tool that bridges the past and present, influencing the construction of cultural landscapes and supporting ongoing dialogues about identity, justice, and historical truth.

Há, contudo, reflexões acerca da contemporaneidade que apontam para o fato de que, se a insatisfação ainda pode ser chamada a caracterizar o humano, a esperança tornase cada vez mais longínqua num contexto em que não há mais confiança na possibilidade de modificação do caráter dos indivíduos e das instituições sociais. A segunda citação que nos serve de epígrafe e que pode ser lida como um contraponto da afirmação de Telarolli (1992) expressa essa falta de confiança que aponta não para uma catastrófica imobilidade, mas para a suposição pós-moderna de que a mudança não significa obrigatoriamente evolução e melhoria. A assertiva de Connor (1996) leva-nos ao questionamento acerca de como se comportaria a expressão satírica, vista como utópica e, portanto, revolucionária, em uma época em que revolução e utopia perderam a importância, já que foram destituídas de sua -até então indissociável -conotação positiva. A constatação da existência de uma sátira cujo poder demolidor não tem contrapartida na esperança utópica do "vir a ser" encontra eco em algumas percepções difusas, quase intuitivas, de alguns estudiosos que se debruçaram quer sobre a sátira, quer sobre seus principais recursos, a paródia e a ironia. Linda Hutcheon, em dois momentos distintos toca nessa questão, em seu estudo sobre a paródia e, posteriomente, em seu estudo sobre a ironia: A sátira tende a defender normas; ridiculariza para levar o desvio a concordar -ou costumava fazê-lo. O "humor negro", a forma mais comum de sátira, hoje em dia, parece a muita gente ser um humor defensivo, de choque, um humor de normas perdidas, de desorientação, de confiança perdida. (HUTCHEON, 1985, p. 101) a sátira tem sido há muito associada a um impulso conservador, mas os comentaristas parecem discordar, hoje em dia, sobre se, na Europa e na América do Norte, por exemplo, o satírico é uma função importante da ironia como ele era, digamos, na Inglaterra do século dezoito. Eles argumentam ou que há certamente muita coisa hoje para a ironia corrigir ou que a idéia mesmo de loucura ou erro corrigíveis deu lugar a um ceticismo sobre a própria possibilidade de mudança. (HUTCHEON, 2000, p. 84) Connor (1996), na mesma obra de onde se extraiu a epígrafe esboça, ao tratar da ironia, o cenário em que a sátira contemporânea parece se mover: A ironia disjuntiva do modernismo cede lugar à ironia suspensiva. Este último tipo de ironia marca uma intensificação da consciência da incoerência, chegando ao ponto em que esta parece não mais poder ser controlada e contida mesmo nas estruturas ordenadoras do estético; ao lado disso, há um declínio da necessidade de ordem, reduzindo-se, em conseqüência, a intensidade organizacional. A ironia suspensiva pós-moderna é, portanto, a marca de uma arte nascida dos acessos de fúria modernista, que combina um conhecimento realista do pior da incoerência, da alienação, com uma tolerância benignamente bem ajustada com elas; como diz Wilde, "uma indecisão quanto aos significados ou relações das coisas é compensada por uma propensão a viver na incerteza, a tolerar, e, em alguns casos, a dar as boas vindas a um mundo visto como aleatório e múltiplo, e até, por vezes, absurdo. (CONNOR, 1996, p. 97) Vocábulos como "niilismo", "desorientação", "ceticismo", "alienação", retirados dos fragmentos acima transcritos, podem-nos ajudar a entender por que motivo Connor (1996, p. 97) acredita que, no pós-modernismo, "um mundo que precisa de conserto é substituído por um mundo além do reparo". Parece que, nesse novo panorama pós-moderno, perdeu-se a confiança na própria possibilidade de reparo, ou, como afirma Linda Hutcheon (1985, p. 103): essa anterior confiança (conservadora?) nos modos humanos de conhecer, compreender, controlar-se -e até sobreviver -parece faltar hoje em dia. Juntamente com isto, desapareceu a nossa capacidade ou boa vontade para estabelecer, com qualquer certeza, hierarquias de valor, quer estéticas, quer sociais. A atitude aparentemente paradoxal de Voltaire -e de todos os escritores que, nos séculos XVII e XVIII, utilizaram-se magistralmente da zombaria para denunciar os desvios da humanidade -, que reprova Rabelais mas também escreve textos satíricos, expressa uma outra concepção de riso, a de riso empenhado, que tem no seu horizonte um objetivo específico. Condena-se o riso ópio e institui-se o riso óculos, aquele capaz de expor as distorções do mundo: [o riso] tornou-se uma faculdade de espírito, uma ferramenta intelectual, um instrumento a serviço de uma causa, moral, social, política, religiosa ou antireligiosa. Ele se decompôs em risos mais ou menos espirituais, em risos funcionais, correspondendo a necessidades precisas. O ridente generalista deu lugar aos especialistas, quase se pode dizer aos profissionais, com tudo o que isso significa de competência e enfraquecimento (MINOIS, 2003, p. 409). Nesse contexto que se abre com a modernidade, ao riso de zombaria é atribuído um papel pedagógico não vislumbrado na Antigüidade e no medievo. Além disso, como se pôde perceber pelos julgamentos de Voltaire em relação a Rabelais, a zombaria, mesmo anterior à modernidade, passou a ser julgada nos termos de sua utilidade para a modificação social. O contexto moderno passou a ver no riso a possibilidade de melhoria da humanidade, por meio da crítica ridicularizadora ao que é considerado inadequado e desviante. Há que se sublinhar que toda a tentativa de periodização é, forçosamente, simplista e arbitrária, embora didaticamente útil. Tendo isso em vista, seria ingênuo e mesmo equivocado afirmar que o riso de zombaria, o "riso óculos", não existia na Antigüidade. Inúmeros elementos nos desmentiriam: a constatação histórica de Minois (2003) a respeito da distinção entre riso bom e riso mau, acima referida; os textos clássicos, entre eles as sátiras horacianas e juvenalianas, às quais alguns estudiosos do riso, tais como João Adolfo Hansen (1991), remontam a origem da sátira moderna. O que marca a cisão entre o riso observado e descrito por Bakhtin e o riso moderno não é o fato daquele ser gratuito, desinteressado, e este ser, de certa forma, empenhado, mas sim, o fato de que o riso renascentista, segundo o estudioso, possuía uma função criadora, regeneradora, que, para nós, indivíduos modernos, é bastante difícil de ser compreendida, uma vez que estamos habituados a ver o riso de zombaria como expressão unicamente denegridora (BAKHTIN, 2002, p. 61). A feição utópica desse riso, cuja força residia, de acordo com , na ambivalência das representações do baixo corporal, da degradação física e do grotesco, desapareceu no riso moderno, quando a concepção de vida da humanidade modificou-se.

A tese é dedicada a Nostromo, romance do polonês radicado na Inglaterra, Joseph Conrad, em que a atividade mineradora em uma mina de prata mobiliza disputas e intrigas políticas na fictícia república de Costaguana na América do Sul. O autor, que é amplamente considerado um dos pioneiros da literatura na era da globalização, descreve com relativa precisão a política latino-americana contemporânea. Como sabemos, a narrativa conradiana é entrecortada pelas causas e efeitos do Imperialismo e do Capitalismo. Em Nostromo encontramos mais um tema pervasivo, a espectralidade. Conrad, em uma chave dupla, conduz dentro da narrativa o “espírito” do Capital por Costaguana. Nesse sentido, o polonês conduz a narrativa apresentando as novas práticas para antigos métodos, como, por exemplo, a sanha imperialista pelo domínio e do capitalismo pelo lucro acima de tudo. Conrad, em um lance de presciência descreveu na estrutura narrativa de Nostromo a instabilidade provocada pelo capitalismo de mercado na América Latina, principalmente através do intervencionismo dos EUA que, com efeito, viria a ser a ordem do dia no continente nos próximos anos. A tese, portanto, avalia tanto o aspecto político e econômico inscrito por Conrad quanto os efeitos (simbólicos e reais) dos temas supracitados.

The purpose of this article is to present the historical context of the narrative space of the literary series Saxon Stories (2004-2020), by British author Bernard Cornwell. After briefly summarizing the plot of the first three novels in the series, we aim to explore the historical backdrop by discussing the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian peoples, as well as their interactions in the 9th century British lands. Notably, the cultural exchange between these groups is significant. Moreover, the relations between these two peoples led to cultural "hybridity", which influenced the formation of English society and identity. This aspect is particularly relevant to the historical novels comprising Saxon Stories, as the protagonist and narrator, Uhtred, embodies this hybridity. Throughout the narrative, Uhtred experiences a sense of division between the two cultures: he is not able to state whether he considers himself an Anglo-Saxon or a Dane.

This essay aims to chart a path between premodern blackface performance and postcolonial theory that escapes colonial teleologies. It analyzes moments from the Abbasid through Mamluk era (ca. 750–1517) popular literary forms—shadow plays, epics, and advice manuals—in which performances of blackness by non-Black people, real and imagined, occur. It argues for the simultaneous historical contingency and interpretative flexibility of these performances, situating them in structures of premodern urban, imperial, and interregional management that distinguish them from modes of blackface performance that ensue from the colonial encounters of the nineteenth century in the Middle East and North Africa. Under their own diverse circumstances, figures in the Islamicate past drew on reservoirs of racialized knowledge and craft in ways that evoke Srinivas Aravamudan's concept of “tropicopolitans,” others at empire's edges that are at once troped and real, parodic and didactic, whose instantiations critique the worlds of which they have been made a part.

De nombreux mangas réinventent la figure de Marie-Antoinette en articulant l’héritage de La Rose de Versailles de Riyoko Ikeda et la représentation d’une figure historique réelle. Ces œuvres adoptent une esthétique narrative qui déconstruit la linéarité historique au profit d’une approche polyphonique, combinant émotions, subjectivités et perspectives alternatives. L’étude examine l’impact structurant de l’œuvre d’Ikeda, qui a fixé des codes narratifs et une scansion temporelle centrée sur des événements marquants, avant d’examiner les mangas destinés à un public masculin, qui s’affranchissent de la fidélité historique pour élaborer des récits décalés et souvent provoquants. Enfin, l’analyse porte sur les gakushû manga, notamment l’œuvre de Fuyumi Soryo qui privilégie une temporalité fragmentée et un portrait plus intimiste de la reine.

Les series televisees, phenomene culturel et social incontournable des quinze dernieres annees, accordent a l’Histoire une place de premier plan. Mettant en scene des guerriers vikings du IXe siecle aussi bien que des narcotrafiquants des annees 1980, les intrigues situees dans un passe proche ou lointain representent l’une des categories les plus prisees du public. Entre reconstitutions minutieuses et anachronismes assumes, ces relectures contemporaines offrent une vision sans cesse renouvelee du passe. Mais celle-ci fait-elle echo aux avancees de la recherche historique? Que nous apprend-elle des rapports que notre societe entretient avec les siecles precedents? Pour expliquer le succes de ces series et la maniere dont elles recomposent notre imaginaire, la collection The Historians – dont ce livre est le deuxieme volume – donne la parole a des historiens de l’Universite de Geneve, qui decortiquent ici cinq series : Rome, Le Siecle magnifique, Penny Dreadful, Zorro et The Walking ...

In the heart of Kurdistan stands Qelata Hewlêr, the ancient citadel of Erbil, a fortress older than most cities on earth. Within its stones lie not only the memories of a people but also mysteries waiting to be uncovered. This novel follows Mardin, a young Kurdish chef, whose discovery of a manuscript titled The Secrets of Qelata Hewlêr pulls her through time. Transported into the living past, she must survive in a kingdom of loyalty, betrayal, and wararmed only with her skills, her courage, and her unshakable sense of identity. Blending history, culture, and imagination, The Secrets of Qelata Hewlêr explores Kurdish heritage through the eyes of a modern woman who finds herself at the crossroads of past and present. #TheSecretsOfQelataHewler #KurdishHeritage #HistoricalFiction #Erbil #KurdishCulture #MiddleEasternHistory #TimeTravelNovel #WomenInHistory #CulturalPreservation #LiteraryFiction #ModernKurdishStories #HeritageAndIdentity #NovelRelease2025 #MustRead #BookLovers #CulturalStories #ExploreKurdistan #HistoryMeetsFiction #KurdishAuthors #NewBookAlert

Over twenty years ago, I began exploring my ancestry by searching my family name online. I knew for a fact that at least some of my ancestors had emigrated to North America. In a database of war deaths, I found a record of a woman with my family name who had once lived in Vyborg and had been killed shortly before the end of the Finnish Civil War. The brief database entry revealed only that she had been a Red Guard commander and had died of a gunshot to the abdomen. I was intrigued by her fate because Lecklin is a relatively rare name in Finland. I continued searching, but found no further information about her anywhere. Nobody in my immediate family had ever heard of her, and so my search came to a dead end.

I forgot about that woman for a long time.

When I later returned to the same database, the entry about her had mysteriously vanished. Having neither saved the web page nor taken a screenshot, I had no evidence of its existence besides the memory of having seen it.
About fifteen years later, the memory of that woman’s cruel fate and the missing archive entry flooded back to me as I began working on a series of short films and multi-channel video installations dealing with the Finnish Civil War. I returned to the same database once again, and wonder of wonders: the record of the woman’s death had reappeared, but in a modified form. Now the entry stated that she had died of a stray bullet, and there was no mention of her having been a Red Guard commander.

Atrocities against women in the liberation war of Bangladesh have not been a very prominent leitmotif in Bangladeshi war narratives so far. It has been there though but as passing remarks and subplots in most of the fictions mostly written by male writers. Only a handful of narratives have solely addressed this issue and among these the most recent one is Dilruba Z Ara"s Blame published in 2015. The novelist is a Bangladeshi born Swedish who has been a witness of such war crimes committed against women in 1971. In her novel she tries to limn her experience through the characters of Laila, who, despite being from a conservative Muslim family, engages herself with the business of war and goes through harrowing experiences in the hands of foes and allies alike, and her friend Gita, whose main crime is that she is a Hindu girl. Ara has attempted to be very thorough in keeping with real-time history as much as possible. In the novel she has tried to incorporate history in such length and details that sometimes it seems her "target" readers are mostly from the English-speaking world who need to be constantly educated on the history to understand the novel. Nevertheless, the novel deserves critical attention particularly because it is perhaps the only novel with some international repute that touches the issue of war violence against women. To cater to a wider audience beyond borders or just a natural preference, the choice of language (English) by an author who is bilingual too is a matter that can be approached critically. The paper tries to investigate whether or not the novel has been a successful endeavour in portraying women war victims through the spectrum of women voices, and its appeal as a war narrative both to the local and global readers.

A masterpiece of modernist fiction that creates a vividly impressionistic portrait of a teeming and multi-faceted New York City

In a series of overlapping stories, John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer takes us from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age in a narrative collage that brings the complexity of the urban environment to life.

From Wall Street to the waterfront, from the Bowery to the Village, from the city’s grand avenues to its gritty alleys, its wealthy power brokers and its struggling immigrants, this kaleidoscopic novel conveys the restless energy of life in Manhattan.

The innovative novelistic techniques Dos Passos used, marked by flashbacks, stream of consciousness, and a cinematic perspective, would go on to inspire a new school of writing.

Almost a century after it was written, Manhattan Transfer remains an indelible tribute to the contradictions of the American dream.

About the Author
John Dos Passos (1896–1970) was born in Chicago and graduated from Harvard in 1916. His service as an ambulance driver in Europe at the end of World War I led him to write Three Soldiers in 1919.

A prolific travel writer, biographer, playwright, and novelist, he is an American classic of the twentieth century. Dos Passos is the author of Manhattan Transfer, Three Soldiers, 1919, and many more.

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Muerte. The Padres taught Tomolelu the word. Now it was all around him. Did they teach us the word to kill us? Auxea, his father, whispered this under his breath. But Tomolelu heard. The old Ohlone scooped another shovelful of dirt into the trench, and more of the burlap bundle was covered up. Tomolelu leaned over his shovel and watched the dust scatter. It was hard to forget that inside the burlap were the skinny arms that had reached for him only yesterday. Nut'u. Her eyes wet with tears, crying out for him. But now her eyes were dry. Tomolelu thought of her eyes, and how they would laugh. How, if she were alive, she could peek through the burlap and see the sky through the thin fibers. He was sure she would smile at the red and yellow and orange. It was the moment she loved so well -when the sun gave way to the moon. For two whole days after they buried Nut'u, there was only Tomolelu and his father. The rest of his family -his mother, his grandmother, and his brothers, along with many of the Ohlones at Mission Santa Clara de Assis -had passed away with fever and returned to the Great Spirit. Or maybe they followed the Padres' God; to purgatory or Heaven or Hell, still obeying the Padres in death. Tomolelu wasn't sure. If Auxea knew, he said nothing to his son. Either way, it didn't really matter. They were still dead.

Following the death of his father, Tomolelu, an almost-grown Ohlone boy, flees the Mission Santa Clara de Assis. He follows the only road he knows, El Camino Real, until he finally understands the words of his father. The earth speaks to those who listen, and this time, the earth is guiding him away from his mission home and away from the El Camino Real.

Funder's Stasiland (2002) and Helen Garner's Joe Cinque's Consolation (2004) are two of the most significant and engrossing Australian books of the early century but their public success was not  matched by the interest of Australian academic critics. Funder's book probably hasn't come into the literary purview because it is not about Australia, but about the repressive nature of the former German Democratic Republic, while some women academics refuse, in the name of feminism, to read Joe Cinque's Consolation because it is written by the author of 'That Book' The First Stone (1995). Yet the appearance of these books marked a new level of achievement in the genre of 'literary non-fiction' in Australia, and they both demonstrate the way the voice of an intelligent amateur can ask questions about a system of power.

Novela cuya trama transcurre en Cuba y República Dominicana alrededor del año 1932 , bajo las tiranías de Gerardo Machado y Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, teniendo como fondo el  uso  de la magia negra por los nazis y su contraparte inglesa, Aleister Crowley , el secuestro del hijo de dos años del sátrapa dominicano en La Habana y la pugna por adquirir una empresa dedicada a construir campos de concentración.

This essay calls for a new way of reading novels: readers should try their best to empty out themselves while reading to be a proper learner of the artist's mind. And the essential aesthetic value that an artistic work has, is by being impressive rather than expressive. This essay focuses on A. S. Byatt's own explanation of choices of images to better reflect upon images within her novel, Possession: A Romance. While the methodology, "in her own words", brings us closer to the intellectual thoughts of the author, discerning images of ice, snow, and glass in her novel could unfold a sensuous landscape before us, and we can therefore delightfully see how words and images mingle with each other, and how intellectual thoughts and senses are unified into one impression as the magic of art.

Resumen El artículo propone una reflexión interdisciplinaria que consta de dos partes. Una, el estudio de la imagen del caballo como motivo literario en las novelas Huesos de lagartija, de Federico Navarrete, y Tu sueño imperios han sido, de Álvaro Enrigue, junto con algunas referencias históricas. Otra, la representación del caballo en la serie Los Teules, de José Clemente Orozco, en La fusión de dos culturas, de Jorge González Camarena, y en el tema "Moxica and the Horse", del músico Vangelis.

The Gupta period (circa 320-550 CE) is often regarded as a golden age in Indian history, marked by significant achievements in art, science, and culture. This paper explores the status of women during this period, examining their roles, rights, and societal expectations. Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach, including historical texts, literary sources, and archaeological findings, this research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of women's lives in Gupta society.

Çağan Irmak's 2023 Netflix series Yaratılan (Creature) is an adaptation inspired by Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein. Çağan Irmak reappropriates the novel into the nineteenth-century Ottoman context. The series presumably has the cholera outbreak (1840s or 1890s) as the triggering point of one of the main characters', Ziya's (Dr Frankenstein's equivalent), search for immortality, and falls in line with the questions raised by the novel, as well as the traumatic history of not only the nineteenth century dynamics but also the human helplessness in the face of pandemics/epidemics, including COVID-19. Ihsan (the creature) as an unusual doctor, who quite extraordinarily becomes the "monster" of this adaptation, helps raise questions concerning (bio-)ethics as well as trauma and recovery. He is re-educated and regains his memory through his encounter with a theatre troupe and heals through his interactions with others who are social outcasts like him. Thus, performance (acting and narrating) functions as a way of facing and dealing with traumatic memories. In the context of cultural adaptation and appropriation of a classical novel, this paper aims to discuss how the act of adaptation itself and the choice of theatrical rehearsal, performance, and storytelling serve as a LaCapraesque acting out and working through to help deal with fictional and non-fictional traumas.

The Finnish Literature Society (SKS) was founded in 1831 and has, from the very beginning, engaged in publishing operations. It nowadays publishes literature in the fields of ethnology and folkloristics, linguistics, literary research and cultural history. The first volume of the Studia Fennica series appeared in 1933. Since 1992, the series has been divided into three thematic subseries: Ethnologica, Folkloristica and Linguistica. Two additional subseries were formed in 2002, Historica and Litteraria. The subseries Anthropologica was formed in 2007. In addition to its publishing activities, the Finnish Literature Society maintains research activities and infrastructures, an archive containing folklore and literary collections, a research library and promotes Finnish literature abroad.

Este artículo analiza cómo, en Perla de Carolina de Robertis, la metáfora del agua —personificada como reino con voz propia— funciona como eje simbólico que articula memoria, verdad y justicia tras la Guerra Sucia argentina. A través del simbolismo acuático, el agua emerge tanto como testigo omnipresente del horror dictatorial como agente restaurativo que posibilita la revelación y sanación de las identidades robadas. Empleando teoría arquetípica (Frye) y el imperativo coyolxauhqui (Anzaldúa), se explora cómo el agua no solo refleja el trauma, sino que transforma a los personajes al disolver fronteras entre vida y muerte, pasado y presente. Esta lectura propone que la narrativa de De Robertis rompe la cronología histórica al presentar al elemento líquido como el narrador más poderoso, un personaje colectivo que rearticula el discurso de la memoria desde el margen.

Orator, military leader, and, above all, organizer of Athenian democracy, Pericles is the narrator of this novel, , from his own thoughts, walking along the shores of Piraeus, on his journey through Scythian Asia, deliberating in the assembly, at the nightly banquets of his friend Sophocles, on the battlefield, as a spy in Byzantium, captivated by the sweet voice of his wife Aspasia's speeches, and finally, surrounded by the Peloponnesian War and the plague. A lover of democracy and creator of an empire, Pericles' dialectical, reflective voice reconstructs his person and his century in this story.

Iowa, the interviewers traveled with Terry Tempest Williams to the small town of Kalona, home to an Amish community. On the perimeter of that community, we had lunch at a home-style caf? and visited an antique store, a converted church where we discovered among the dry sinks, oak tables, tinker toys, depression glass, and familiar quilt patterns, a red and white Hopi-design quilt with such a history of being mistaken for a Nazi pattern, it was kept folded inside-out, on a lower shelf. Later, we visited writer Mary Swander at her home in a converted one room schoolhouse surrounded by Amish homesteads. We drove down dirt and stone roads, flying past school children in simple home-made pinafores and trousers, past horse drawn buggies. After herbal tea overlooking the farm fields and broad sky at Mary's wall of windows, we visited sites from her poems and memoir?the Amish phone booth and the paddock with the one-eyed goat among them. We ended our day in Kalona with Mary at an Amish fabric and quilt store where we looked at display quilts and watched a woman and girl at work on a new quilt. We talked with Terry that evening at The Iowa House on the Iowa River. Jocelyn: Today in Kalona, at Mary Swander's house, you spoke of jour neys to the interior of places, how, over time, seeing first-hand the way people live, your initial idea of a place is transformed. It's a transfor mation that obliterates all memory of a first impression or any pre conceived expectation of that place. So much of your writing centers on place, the fine nuances of place. In An Unspoken Hunger, you are being guided through a place, from the perimeter to the interior, just as we were today in Kalona. In Vieces of White Shell and Refuge, you open with the very feel of the place, the texture of sage on your fingers. Your latest book, Desert Quartet, moves even closer, into "an erotics of place," where touch becomes multi layered, taking on an even greater significance. What

An inquisitive twelve-year-old merchant's son named Andrew from ninth-century Italy sets sail with his father on his first voyage to Constantinople, queen of cities and marketplace of the world.

Join Andrew and his father as they sail across the vast Mediterranean Sea aboard a lone merchant vessel, with only their wits and faith to keep them alive. Hear about mercy, loyalty, and courage as you walk the streets of ancient Constantinople. Journey through the enchanting lands of Byzantium as they once were centuries ago, in a world of beautiful art and simple devotion when hardship was matched only by people's compassion.

Unexpected encounters with pirates and the imperial navy threaten to prevent their safe return home, where their loved ones wait in agonizing silence. Andrew meets men of great generosity who show him that real value in life cannot be purchased. This fictional story of life and hope relates the history of the period while showing how the church preserved justice and civilization in a dark time.

Review Quotes
"Mariners of Byzantium is a very interesting attempt to evoke the Byzantine world in an entertaining and engaging way."
- Professor Ken Dark Author of Constantinople Archaeology of a Byzantine Megapolis.

"Merlino, who holds a master's degree in medieval history, has clearly studied his subject well; the novel showcases how family dynamics, the merchant trade, religion, and politics influenced both society and day-to-day life at the time. Leo and Andrew are not so much individualized characters as they are windows that allow the reader to peek into their world and witness how quickly a seemingly straightforward trip could, due to the forces that powered the Byzantine Empire, transform into a monthslong journey rife with both positive and negative experiences."
- Kirkus Reviews

"Mariners of Byzantium does a good job of presenting those distant times in a way that should appeal to YA readers. The evocative illustrations help reinforce the sense of personality and place."
- Professor Marcus Rautman Author of Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire.

"I particularly like the illustrations which give you a sense of the scale of the large building interiors. I think the artwork in Mariners of Byzantium will connect well with a young readership."
- Peter Dennis Illustrator of Byzantine Warship vs Arab Warship and The Walls of Constantinople AD 324-1453.

"Patrick Nunes has produced fine illustrations whose figurative, architectural, ornamental and landscape elements are well integrated. They are true both to the historical setting of the book, and to the artist's signature style."
- Daniel Mitsui Author and Illustrator of Christian Labyrinths.

"Nunes' color illustrations, meant to evoke the art of the times, punctuate the introductions of settings and historical items, allowing the reader to visualize the landscape along with Andrew."
- Kirkus Reviews

"Patrick's serene and simplified linework and harmonious colors feel both reminiscent of the ancient Byzantine art, but also fresh and vivid. His illustrations will reward and delight readers of the Mariners of Byzantium in many scenes of calm, intimate stillness as well as vistas of mystery, danger, and grandeur."
- John Folley Illustrator of Colors of Creation.

There have been a number of books and articles in the last decade that focus on family and marriage, including courtship, in early modern England or on the negotiations of specific marriages. Many of these studies were written in response to the pioneering but often controversial work by Lawrence Stone. Literary scholars,

Shirley Shackleton said that after her husband Greg was killed in Timor-Leste in October 1975, for seven weeks she became a campaigner for justice for the journalists murdered in Balibo, then after Indonesia invaded in December 1975 she became a campaigner for justice for all the East Timorese too.  Shackleton saw the Australian government treatment of the killings as a litmus test of Australian East Timor policy. She continued to pressure the government for a Federal Police investigation of those responsible for the deaths, culminating with Australian politicians and diplomats being put in the dock and scrutinised under oath in a Coronial Inquiry in 2007.

This paper explores the political ideologies of patrons, publishers, and translators while translating a source text into a target language. Furthermore, the current study compares three English translations of the short story "Toba Tek Singh" by Saadat Hasan Manto by three translators from three different countries: Khalid Hasan, Khushwant Singh, and Frances W. Pritchett. These three translations are analyzed from three different geo-cultural perspectives, that is, Pakistani, Indian, and Anglo-American. In our research, we have combined the general conventions of translation with the insights emerging from CDA, particularly Van Dijk's notion of media discourse. The translations are examined with regard to such aspects as addition, omission, modulation, and faithfulness. This study reveals serious compromises on faithfulness in Hasan's and Singh's translations. This can possibly be attributed to the geopolitically volatile climate in which both of these translators must have conceptualized their target text. However, Pritchett appears to be largely successful in maintaining faithfulness to the source text and her translation is by and large more skilled and is only negligibly marked by ideological inventions.

The present research aims at conducting a comparative analysis to determine the role of Pakistani English fiction writers in promoting national identity and unity. With an insight into the collection of short stories In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin and the novel Home Boy by H.M. Naqvi, the research explores the underlying themes and narratives of the two aforementioned works to evaluate their contributions in the formation and representation of a Pakistani national identity. The study adopts a qualitative approach whereby the researchers have employed a method of textual analysis to explore the literary techniques used in each work and how it reflects the Pakistani cultural and political contexts by utilizing theoretical framework of Anderson (1991). The analysis has focused on the use of language, characterization, and imagery to show how Pakistani English literature reinforces or challenges stereotypes and prejudices related to Pakistan and Pakistani people. This research concludes that the role of Pakistani English literature in promoting national identity and unity is crucial.

Enter into the world of medieval Baghdad as Zaytuna and Tein solve mysteries and come to terms with the legacy of their mother and the violence they believe have consigned them to lives without love. Widely used in university courses, each mystery uncovers a different aspect of medieval Islamic history.

Selected Reviews "[The Lover] synthesizes much of the finest and newest research in Islamic studies, and then places it in motion before our eyes. …It is in these details, so precisely and purposely placed, and yet backgrounded to the narrative, that the book becomes a brilliant kind of introduction, albeit inadvertent, to classical Islam and medieval Muslims. The Lover's first-rate storytelling and characters … propel it to enormity."-Adam Gaiser, The Muslim World, Florida State University

[The Jealous] works very well for undergrad courses in history, gender, religion. [The novel] enlivens dry historical facts, breathes life into characters and events. …The accuracy of its historical facts is matched by authenticity of characters. They are real and relatable. Their emotions are raw, making their issues and concerns universal. I felt I was not just reading about history, but about the human condition. I am personally more impressed by vivid imagery that the words on page evoke, and this book did not disappoint.-Mahdi Tourage, King's University College Western University

"In this exceptionally well-written and lucid book, Laury Silvers brings the intricacies of medieval Islamic religiosities and society to life. Exploring the little-known religious communities of medieval Baghdad, The Unseen invites the reader to journey through the often forgotten multifaceted dimensions of pre-modern society, addressing questions such as dissent, sectarianism, and communal relations."-Ahab Bdaiwi, Leiden and Cambridge Universities

"[In The Peace,] Silvers brings to life complex and consequential debates within specialized scholarly circles of Quran reciters of tenth century Baghdad."-Marijn van Putten,

Sleuths on a Sufi path Rarely has the world of crime-writing taken such an interesting turn. Richard Marcus spoke to American Muslim historian and novelist Laury Silvers about her four detective novels set in Baghdad under the Abbasid caliphate and the advantages of self-publishing By Richard Marcus Set among tenth century Baghdad's emerging Sufi community, Laury Silvers' Sufi Mysteries Quartet ↗ is a treat for fans of historical fiction. Each of the three published books, The Lover, The Jealous, The Unseen and the soon-to-bepublished fourth, The Peace, focus on a murder, but also on the life challenges facing the protagonists. Playing to her strengths as a specialist in early Islamic mysticism during the Abbasid caliphate, Silvers vividly recreates a sense of what life was like over one thousand years ago in the region now known as Iraq. Cleverly weaving in detail on everything from how the justice system functioned under the caliph

The first thing any customer should know is that this is NOT historical fiction. Either Costanza knows nothing about Bronze Age Hellas or she has purposefully ignored it. The Sparta she writes about is based on Classical era Sparta, and even that is not accurate. She writes of Spartiates as including women, but that was never the case. "We can assume that in Mycenaean times, women belonged to the group, too, since Spartan women were free citizens," Costanza writes in her glossary, but that is the most blatant nonsense. Women were never really "free citizens" in Sparta and certainly not in the Age of Palace Kingdoms. Back then, Sparta was mainly a hilltop fortress in the Bronze Age, and it was referred to only as the district of Lakedaimon. Of course, Homer set the precedent for such fictions 500 years after the Bronze Age Collapse.

This research paper explores the cultural conflict and ecological decline: Opposition of indigenous people to colonizers. In Barkskins, large areas of woodland in New France are cleared by two Frenchmen, Charles Duquet and René Sel, on behalf of a landowner, Claude Trépagny. Duquet quits the work to pursue the fur trade, leaving Sel to carry out their arrangement. Sel's descendants become ardent environmentalists committed to preserving their surroundings. With an emphasis on the value of leaving a legacy for future generations, the novel ends with hopeful note of the significance of conservation of the nature. It makes an attempt to deal the following issues: In what ways does this text explore the impacts of colonialism on Indigenous cultures and traditions? How does Proulx connect environmental degradation to cultural loss and societal collapse? And in what ways do Indigenous characters challenge the colonial exploitation of both land and culture? Ecocriticism, Anthropocentrism, and postcolonialism are the theoretical frameworks and research techniques that are used to examine the issues of Cultural Clash, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Colonial Anthropocene in Barkskins.

This article offers translation as a new model for conceptualising the transnational travel of memories that operates through transcultural memorial forms. It draws on translation studies, world literature studies and receptions studies to describe the domesticating and foreignising effects of memories that are ‘born translated’ and the ways they are received. The second part of the article discusses Sofi Oksanen’s novel Purge as a translation of memories of Soviet state terror through the transcultural memorial form of war rape and its foreignising effects in the local context of remembering of these events.

Recently, our image of Neanderthals, long considered as dumb brutes, has changed dramatically, and this has repercussions for long-standing views about ourselves as well. Neanderthals provided inspiration for science fiction, and novels reveal the shifts that have occurred in our views on Neanderthals in terms of different or similar, deficient or superior, strange or familiar. Whereas archaeological findings often raise more questions than they answer, novels can be considered laboratories of the imagination, allowing authors to explore possible scenarios. They can function as spotlights, conveying and amplifying stereotypes and ideologies which are also at work in scholarly discourse more explicitly.
With the expert Neanderthal discourse as a backdrop and frame of reference, we will focus on novels that deal with Neanderthal – Homo sapiens encounters. We try to understand Neanderthals in terms of their humanity, but establish identity by the difference between us and them. What happens when humans and Neanderthals meet? What differences or similarities are highlighted, which characteristics are valued, what is silenced? How do writers in comparison with scientists deal with the ambiguity of Neanderthals, being strange and familiar at the same time, human, but not-us?
Explicit attention will be given to literary archetypes such as the role of the (exploring, conquering) Hero and the opposite side of the archetypical coin, the Orphan, who desires to become connected. This captures a basic ambivalence: the desire to distinguish ourselves versus the need for connectedness. By stepping out of the current social configuration, fiction can reflect and reveal current anxieties and preoccupations as well as implicit biases underlying our ideas and ideals of human and humanness, that should be acknowledged and addressed. By emphasising the importance of connectedness, the figure of the Orphan may function as a counterbalance to an inflated heroic view of early human history.

Following the death of his father, Tomolelu, an almost-grown Ohlone boy, flees the Mission Santa Clara de Assis. He follows the only road he knows, El Camino Real, until he finally understands the words of his father. The earth speaks to those who listen, and this time, the earth is guiding him away from his mission home and away from the El Camino Real.

Christy Lefteri's The Beekeeper of Aleppo provides a powerful depiction of the tragedy in Syria, focusing on the feelings and struggles caused by war, displacement, and loss. This article closely examines how Lefteri shows Syrians' fear, pain, and suffering through the main characters, Nuri and his wife, Afra. The book shows war not only as a destructive event but also as a personal experience that damages a person's identity, memories, and hopes. Lefteri shows how trauma is complicated by mixing stories from the past and present. She explains that survivors still carry the effects of war with them, even after they escape. Syria is shown through memories of Aleppo's busy streets, its destroyed places, and the bloodshed, highlighting a strong feeling of loss and yearning. The book uses descriptive language to show broken homes, dusty air, and quiet streets, highlighting the harsh facts of war and being forced to leave one's home. This study shows that The Beekeeper of Aleppo is not only about the story of the tragedy in Syria but it also makes the victims feel real. It explores themes of strength, loss, and the longing for a place to call home. The study will closely examine important sections of the novel to show how it portrays grief, strength, and survival. It will explain how the novel provides a deep reflection on the quest for home and healing.

En este artículo se realiza el estudio de cuatro series de ficción histórica con gran éxito de audiencia cuya trama se desarrolla en un contexto de dictadura política. Concretamente, se ha llevado a cabo un análisis cualitativo comparativo de las series de ficción Los 80 (Canal 13, Chile), Los Archivos del Cardenal (TVN, Chile), Amar en tiempos revueltos (TVE1, España) y Cuéntame cómo pasó (TVE1, España). En el trabajo se demuestra que el éxito de estas series es debido a la utilización en ellas de recursos que apelan a la memoria cotidiana, provocando identificación en la audiencia y, al mismo tiempo, a que atienden temáticas que necesitan someterse a discusión pública

The Greek Alexander Romance, probably created in the late Hellenistic age but known from a long series of successive versions which reach well into Byzantine times, has been pieced together from materials of various earlier writings about Alexander, both historical and pseudo-historical or fictional ones. The final composite synthesis consists of two main components. The earlier part of the work follows Alexander’s biography, from his childhood and accession to the throne to his early campaigns in mainland Greece, the expedition to Asia, and the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire. The main outline of these events has been drawn from a historical work, apparently a representative of the more sensational and rhetorically embellished trends of Hellenistic historiography, in the manner e.g. of Clitarchus or Phylarchus. However, the author of the romance mixes up historical incidents and figures, distorts chronology and geography, and enriches the plot with entirely imaginary episodes, to achieve effects of suspense, emotion, and pathos. In a way, he operates like a modern Hollywood scriptwriter, manipulating the stuff of history to produce an entertaining fiction dressed in period costumes.

On the other hand, in the latter half of the romance, the theme of extraordinary travel predominates. Alexander moves beyond the borders of the Persian Empire and wanders in exotic locations, encountering monsters, natural marvels, and utopian lands, in search of the limits of the world and the meaning of life. A few of these weird travel tales correspond to motifs of wonder presented by the historians of Alexander in their descriptions of India or Central Asia. Mostly, however, the travelogues of the romance belong to another, even more fabulous and extravagant tradition, possibly going back to oral reports of the veterans of Alexander’s campaign, which were given a literary form in travel novels and utopian fictions of the Hellenistic age. The material of these narratives includes fictionalised versions of the soldiers’ experiences, propelled into the realm of pure fantasy, but also popular folktales and legends of the Near East, which must have been picked up by veterans and transferred to Alexander’s person. The ensuing image of the Macedonian king, halfway between conquistador and explorer, is at best a mythicised offshoot of the traditional historical portrait. Nevertheless, it exercised immense influence on the shaping of Alexander’s figure in popular imagination and literary production, in East and West, through the Middle Ages and up to the eve of modernity.

This short story is a work of historical fiction inspired by the epitaph of Prima Florentia, a Roman girl killed by her husband and cast into the Tiber (EDR101804). Grounded in archaeological and epigraphic evidence, it reconstructs the lived experience of gendered violence in ancient Rome. Without contradicting historical sources, the narrative gives voice to a woman silenced by her time, blending scholarly method with literary imagination.
It serves as a narrative epilogue to the volume Dure a morire, echoing and deepening the themes of the essays through fiction grounded in historical reality.

Linked to: Dure a morire (B. Girotti, V. Uglietti (a cura di), Pàtron, Bologna 2025) – digital appendix via QR

Published as part of the PRIN 2022 project #ETIAMEGO – Violence against women in ancient Rome (https://etiamego.unito.it/), funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research and the European Union – Next Generation EU.

Peshwa 1 Bajirao I was an early 18 th century general of the Maratha Empire of India. Bajirao I is remembered today as an invincible general. However, he is remembered more prominently for his romance with his second wife Mastani, a figure whose identity in history remains largely unrecorded. Over the past few decades, the love story of Bajirao and Mastani has been the subject of several textual and visual mediums but this study will focus a 2012 novel by Kusum Choppra and will look at Mastani to see how the female who remained mysteriously buried in history finds her space in 21 st century exotic historical writing. From being a footnote in most histories, described as the mistress, or the court-dancer, to being the protagonist of Choppra's novel Mastani, depicted as a fierce princess trained in politics, martial arts and intellectual diplomacy and a true companion to the peshwa, Mastani has come a long way. The paper will try to see, in light of feminism and the self-other dichotomy, how such authorial strategies of recording and recreating the historical female help the narrative thrive in the modern Indian marketplace.

Despite a biography full of episodes of struggle against dictatorship, revolutionary fervor of his early works, membership in the Communist Party, participation in the international peace movement, friendship with the major writers of his generation and “fellow travelers” of the Soviet Union (P. Neruda, R. Alberti, and others), and, finally, a desire to establish contact with the Soviet Writers' Union, the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva (1908-1985) remained unknown in this country for a long time. This article reconstructs the relationship between Otero Silva and Soviet literature from the first attempts at rapprochement in the mid-1930s to the peak of the writer's popularity in the Soviet Union in the 1960s-1980s. The paper explains why the Communist writer's panegyric to Stalin in 1948 did not bring him the desired attention from Moscow, while the benevolent criticism of Soviet achievements by the renegade Marxist in the 1960s made him a “true friend” of the USSR. As a result of the study, the author concluded that during the Stalinist years Otero Silva lacked intermediaries who would “promote” him in the country, and, moreover, the publication of his works was impossible due to their plot features. In the 1960s, the Venezuelan's sudden popularity in the Soviet Union was boosted by the fashion for Latin American literature combined with his own willingness to cooperate. Drawing on archival sources and the Soviet press, the circumstances of Otero Silva's visits to the country in 1965, 1967, 1973, and 1980 are reconstructed. The author also shows how, as the Venezuelan's fame grew in the USSR, his biography, created by Soviet literary critics, became formulaic and “appropriate” for a Lenin Peace Prize laureate.

Несмотря на биографию, полную эпизодов борьбы с диктатурой, революционный пыл ранних произведений, членство в коммунистической партии, участие в международном движении за мир, дружбу с крупнейшими писателями своего поколения и «попутчиками» Советского Союза (П. Нерудой, Р. Альберти и другими) и, наконец, желание установить контакт с Советским Союзом, венесуэльский писатель Мигель Отеро Сильва (1908–1985) долго оставался неизвестен в этой стране. В статье мы реконструировали отношения между Отеро Сильвой и советской литературой от первых попыток сближения в середине 1930-х гг. до пика популярности писателя в СССР в 1960-х — 1980-х гг. В работе объясняется, почему панегирик Сталину, написанный писателем-коммунистом в 1948 г., не принес ему желанного внимания Москвы, а доброжелательная критика советских достижений ренегатом марксизма в 1960-х гг. сделала его «настоящим другом» Советского Союза. В результате исследования автор пришла к выводу, что в сталинские годы Отеро Сильве не хватало посредников, которые бы «продвинули» его в СССР, а кроме того, публикация его произведений была невозможна в силу их сюжетных особенностей. В 1960-е гг. внезапной популярности венесуэльца в Советском Союзе способствовала мода на латиноамериканскую литературу в сочетании с его собственной готовностью к сотрудничеству. На основе архивных источников и советской печати реконструируются обстоятельства визитов Отеро Сильвы в страну в 1965, 1967, 1973 и 1980 гг. Автор также показывает, как по мере того, как росла слава венесуэльца в СССР, его биография, создаваемая советскими литературоведами, становилась шаблонной и «подходящей» лауреату Ленинской премии мира.