There Are A Few Famous Chinese Historical Novels

Historical Tapestry has invited me to guest post with a discussion of historical novels set in China. This in response to my comment on Mary Tod's blog A Writer of History that I find historical fiction about China to be indifferently represented in forums devoted to the historical genre.

I assume the principle reason for this scarcity may be that we American readers are not so familiar with Asian history; in our schools Western history generally receives more emphasis – Athens rather the Warring States, Rome instead of the Han Dynasty, the Hanover monarchs and not the Manchu empire. So, the Far East is a longer reach.

Still, the reasons for reading Chinese historical novels are not unlike those for reading historicals set in the West or near East. The people invoked have similar troubles and triumphs, and the events evoked have similar storm and stress – but in different contexts often fascinating in their contrast. We gain some insight into people of another time, and perhaps into how our time came to be, by sharing in their drama. Adventure, war, hard times, love, understanding – they live in the pages of historical fiction about China just as they do in that about other places.

And what am I calling historical fiction? In addition to novels about events regarded as historical, events older than 50 years according to some forums, there are included here titles that, while not historical when published, are set in places that time has since changed enough to make them quite different now and, as such, have become chronicles of the vanished past.

There are original English-language novels about China, and Chinese-language novels widely available in translation. There are older books rarely heard of now, and more recent novels. And there are novels about Chinese-American experience (besides Amy Tan) I've left off the list because they are not quite historicals yet. Some of these are about earlier history and others are about more recent events.