Italian Historical Fiction
Photo by Sapphireblue.
On her blog A World of Words, Lucinda Byatt writes:
Thanks to Rita Charbonnier for drawing my attention to this great discussion among fans of Italian historical novels and four authors – at the moment of writing this, there have been a total of 428 comments!
It was a real eye-opener to discover the buzz of excitement created by Massimo Maugeri on his blog Letteratitudine when a few days ago he launched an open discussion focused on historical novels led by Andrea Ballarini, Marco Salvador, Cinzia Tani and Rita herself. Filippo Tuena, Andrea Frediani and Giulio Castelli later also joined in.
I couldn’t possibly translate all the comments that have been made, but Massimo launched a few key questions to get the discussion going:
1. What are the key characteristics of a historical novel?
2. What should be the aims of a historical novel?
3. On the contrary, what should it avoid doing?
4. How do you view the market for historical novels in Italy today?
5. And in the rest of the world?
6. Survey question – what do you think is the greatest historical novel “of all time” (the most representative of its kind)?
