The Chronicle: Colloquy: Responses

What happened to the historical novel? That genre evolved precisely because writers wanted to inquire into, or evoke, historical "truth" in the larger, allegorical/symbolic sense without necessarily being bound by empirical facts.

According to several of our commentators, this particular book fails as historical fiction, as well as being poor history. But that's a different argument: I'm not quite sure why we need to argue the basic question of whether this tome belongs on our "History" shelves, when we've already got a perfectly respectable literary genre in which to put it.

Or am I missing something?

: -- David G. Whiteis, whiteis@ipfw.edu (posted 10/18, 12:12 p.m., E.D.T.)

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