I just finished reading Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and it may be up there for one of my absolute favorites. Looking for other queer historical fiction novels, ideally not YA. I will also take recommendations for historical fiction that can be read through a queer lens
Posted Dec 8, 2023, 2:15 PM UTC
I loved ‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’ by John Boyne. It’s a story set in Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of a queer protagonist. It’s one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read
“Beyond the Pale” by Elana Dykewomon is an absolute labor of love, about Jewish lesbian immigrants and labor organizing.
Check out Natasha Pulley, this is her whole thing. The Watchmaker of Filigree St (an English civil servant is assigned to monitor the mysterious watchmaker Keita Mori, who is under suspicion as a bombmaker for Irish nationalists) was her debut, while The Half Life of Valery K (political gulag prisoner Valery Kolkhanov is assigned to serve out the rest of his sentence as a prisoner scientist in one of the Soviet Union's closed cities, monitoring radioactivity experiments under the eye of the KGB) is her most recent.
I've also recently read In Memoriam by Alice Winn (tragic coming of age as two boys move from their idyllic English boarding school life to the horrors of the western front in WWI), and I'm planning on checking out The Huntress by Kate Quinn (a Russian bomber pilot and a war reporter join forces to hunt a notorious Nazi post-war) soon.
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
Loved Fingersmith as well, and if you haven’t yet, would also suggest Waters’ other books, especially Tipping the Velvet. Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens, Lone Women by Victor LaValle, and Outlawed by Anna North are all alternative westerns that feature women, PoC and/or queer protagonists. Emma Donoghue has some good historicals, some of which are more explicitly queer.
Awesome thank you! I was actually planning to pick up a copy of Tipping the Velvet today! I’ll add the others to my list as well