Here are 100 books that A Tudor Turk fans have personally recommended if you like
A Tudor Turk.
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I am a retired university professor who taught creative writing at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, and a not-yet-retired author, although I have on several occasions solemnly stated that I have written my last prose book. I believe these two qualities make me competent to create a list of 5 books that I have reread the most often.
I don't think there is an author who hasn't at least once wished that he was the one who wrote a book by another author. Ever since I first read Umberto Eco's masterpiece, I wished I had written it. That wish only intensified whenever I reread it—and I did it many times. It is a perfect novel by all standards. It is a superb literary work based on storytelling virtuosity and a colossal erudition.
The detective narrative drive is a background of the main theme—how the Renaissance was borne. No other novel in the history of literature has managed to depict a long-gone century in such an impeccably authentic way. Among many authors who influenced my writing, Umberto Eco is certainly the most prominent.
The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective.
William collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey where extraordinary things are happening under the cover of night. A spectacular popular and critical success, The Name of the Rose is not only a narrative of a murder investigation but an astonishing chronicle of the Middle Ages.
I'm a retired historian of early Islam and writer of historical fiction set in medieval Iraq, Turkic, and Persian lands. I write and love to read novels that “do history.” In other words, historical fiction that unravels the tangles of history through the lives of its characters, especially when told from the perspectives of those upon whom elite power is wielded. My selections are written by authors who speak from an informed position, either as academic or lay historians, those with a stake in that history, or, like me, both, and include major press, small press, and self-published works and represent the histories of West Africa, Europe, Central and West Asia, and South Asia.
Segu
may begin with a lone white explorer gazing across a river at the Bambara
people, but this novel turns away from him to those whose world will be irrevocably
changed as colonialism and Christianity, Muslim expansionism, and the horrific
trade in human beings irrevocably changes the course of African lives. Condé
turns an unblinking eye on the Traore family as they break under the weight of
these civilizational pressures. Traditional ways of life turn brutal and
desperate—women especially feel the brunt of an unstable world—and sons abandon
the family for enemies or are kidnapped and enslaved. Each storyline in this
famed epic cuts straight into the political and social complexities of that
time and exposes its players to uncompromising account.
'Maryse Conde is an extraordinary storyteller who brings the history of an African kingdom alive as vividly as if it existed today. . . This is a great novel: unputdownable and unforgettable' Bernardine Evaristo
Winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize for Literature 2018
The bestselling epic novel of family, treachery, rivalry, religious fervour and the turbulent fate of a royal African dynasty
It is 1797 and the African kingdom of Segu, born of blood and violence, is at the height of its power. Yet Dousika Traore, the king's most trusted advisor, feels nothing but dread. Change is coming. From the…
I'm a retired historian of early Islam and writer of historical fiction set in medieval Iraq, Turkic, and Persian lands. I write and love to read novels that “do history.” In other words, historical fiction that unravels the tangles of history through the lives of its characters, especially when told from the perspectives of those upon whom elite power is wielded. My selections are written by authors who speak from an informed position, either as academic or lay historians, those with a stake in that history, or, like me, both, and include major press, small press, and self-published works and represent the histories of West Africa, Europe, Central and West Asia, and South Asia.
The magnificence
of the first in the Amalgant series is the immersive
reconstruction of Mongol social, political, and religious worlds, as well as the
lives of its people. Hammond resistantly reads histories produced by hostile
cultures, instead privileging the earliest and most comprehensive Mongol
tellings of their own lives, The
Secret History of the Mongols. This is no dry historical account of
cultural norms, steppe relations, or material artifacts, but an intimate and
humane telling of the personal tragedies and struggles that would change the
world as the war-orphaned Temujin grows to be the man we know as Chenggiz Khan.
Mother Hoelun was never ashamed or embarrassed by their hardships. When Jochi wore a dog’s pelt for a cloak, because they had no fleeces and no felt and had to trade for hides and dog was cheap, none of the children felt a sense of indignity. Indignity was alien to her.The Mongols are a people of orphans. A disastrous battle with China has left wives without husbands, children without fathers. Temujin is one of these children, impoverished by the heavy tribute China has punished them with, in danger of forgetting what a Mongol stands for. Worse, Temujin's the subject of…
I'm a retired historian of early Islam and writer of historical fiction set in medieval Iraq, Turkic, and Persian lands. I write and love to read novels that “do history.” In other words, historical fiction that unravels the tangles of history through the lives of its characters, especially when told from the perspectives of those upon whom elite power is wielded. My selections are written by authors who speak from an informed position, either as academic or lay historians, those with a stake in that history, or, like me, both, and include major press, small press, and self-published works and represent the histories of West Africa, Europe, Central and West Asia, and South Asia.
Set in Delhi on
the eve of the first battle for Indian independence in 1857 that would be so
brutally put down by the British, ending with Delhi in flames and India coming
under direct British rule, our detective, the poet laureate Mirza Ghalib
investigates a murder. The investigation reveals the myriad of personalities,
pressures, and allegiances from every corner of Indian and British society that
led to the uprising and all that has come after. This finely wrought novel
begins and ends with death at a Mushaira—a poetry recitation, public, private,
or intimate for just two, that typically drew from every level of society—sounding
the loss of India as it was before colonization, and then partition, when
religious and social boundaries were not as starkly defined and policed as they
are now.
3 May 1857. India stands on the brink of war. Everywhere in its cities, towns, and villages, rebels and revolutionaries are massing to overthrow the ruthless and corrupt British East India Company which has taken over the country and laid it to waste. In Delhi, the capital, even as the plot to get rid of the hated foreigners gathers intensity, the busy social life of the city hums along. Nautch girls entertain clients, nawabs host mushairas or poetry soirees in which the finest poets of the realm congregate to recite their latest verse and intrigue, the wealthy roister in magnificent…
I’m a historian of early modern Europe. I have a particular interest in the history of violence and social relations and how and why ordinary people came into conflict with each other and how they made peace, that’s the subject of my most recent book Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe, which compares the entanglement of everyday animosities and how these were resolved in Italy, Germany, France and England. I’m also passionate about understanding Europe’s contribution to world history. As editor of The Cambridge World History of Violence, I explored the dark side of this. But my next book, The Invention of Civil Society, will demonstrate Europe’s more positive achievements.
If you haven’t read Montaigne’s Essays start now. I suggest reading one a day – they’re quite short.
I love this book because Montaigne is a genius for all time. Montaigne exploration of what it means to be human remains relevant today. It connects our world with past and shows that, although technology has changed and we can become a lot richer, humans haven’t changed so much.
Montaigne’s Essays are not a relic, they are the mirror on our present condition.
One of the most important writers and thinkers of the Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) helped invent a literary genre that seemed more modern than anything that had come before. But did he do it, as he suggests in his Essays, by retreating to his chateau, turning his back on the world, and stoically detaching himself from his violent times? In this definitive biography, Philippe Desan, one of the world's leading authorities on Montaigne, overturns this longstanding myth by showing that Montaigne was constantly concerned with realizing his political ambitions--and that the literary and philosophical character of the Essays largely…
I’ve always loved all things Elizabethan, and I especially love spending time with books and manuscripts where voices from the period speak to us directly. Wanting to understand how Shakespeare and his contemporaries understood themselves led me to investigate their ideas about relations between mind and body, about emotions, about the imagination, and about the minds of women and those of other races. I’ve learned that the Elizabethans grappled with many conflicting ideas about the mind, from classical philosophies, medieval medicine, new theologies, and more – and that this intellectual turmoil was essential fuel for the extraordinary literary creativity of the period.
A startling finding when I was researching Elizabethan ideas about the mind was how far their attitudes to the imagination differed from ours.
We see it as a creative force to be encouraged and liberated, but for them it was dangerous, deceptive, and unruly, leading towards sinfulness and madness. Roychoudhury explains how early scientific thinking was starting to unsettle this traditional view of the imagination as reprehensible, and traces the effects of this in works including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Sonnets, and Macbeth.
I would add that the new commercial playhouses for which Shakespeare wrote became experimental crucibles: these were spaces where the combined imaginations of playwright, actors, and audiences created virtual realities, unleashing an exhilarating and magical sense of the powers of imagination.
Representations of the mind have a central place in Shakespeare's artistic imagination, as we see in Bottom struggling to articulate his dream, Macbeth reaching for a dagger that is not there, and Prospero humbling his enemies with spectacular illusions. Phantasmatic Shakespeare examines the intersection between early modern literature and early modern understandings of the mind's ability to perceive and imagine. Suparna Roychoudhury argues that Shakespeare's portrayal of the imagination participates in sixteenth-century psychological discourse and reflects also how fields of anatomy, medicine, mathematics, and natural history jolted and reshaped conceptions of mentality. Although the new sciences did not displace the…
I studied the Tudor era in high school and have been hooked ever since. It was an era of enormous change. The world was opening up, science was advancing, religion was losing its grip over people, and new ideas were challenging every level of society. Discovery was everywhere–new planets, lands, theories, foods, and trading routes. Society was changing, and women were beginning to have a voice and education. It was also an era of characters–men and some women who made a mark on the world through their wit and wisdom–and some just by being rogues. There are no dull moments in Tudor times.
I loved this because there is a sense of foreboding from the beginning, and the horror builds. SW Perry pulls you into the dirt, grime, and grunge of Tudor London and the roughness of life at the end of the Tudor reign.
You are immersed in the sheer awfulness of medieval medicine and the arrogance of the people who led it. You can almost smell the streets and laboratories and hear Tudor London's din. I also loved it because the key characters are sympathetically developed and flawed.
Also, the dual point of view leads you to feel a sense of urgency and fear, which adds to the pace of the reading.
Longlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Historical Fiction Dagger, 2019
A Walter Scott Prize Academy Recommended Read 2019
'Rich, intelligent and dark in equal measure, leaving you wrung out with terror. Historical fiction at its most sumptuous.' Rory Clements ________________________
Heresy. Conspiracy. Murder...
London, 1590: Amidst a tumultuous backdrop of Spanish plotters, Catholic heretics and foreign wars, Queen Elizabeth I's control over her kingdom is wavering.
And a killer is at work, preying on the weak and destitute of London...
Idealistic physician Nicholas Shelby becomes determined to end these terrible murders. Joined in his investigations by Bianca, a beautiful but…
Nancy Blanton is an American author of Irish descent. She’s written three award-winning Irish historical novels and has a fourth underway. A former journalist, her focus on the 17th century derives from a history lesson about Oliver Cromwell, weariness of Tudor stories, decades of enlightening research, and a little help from supportive friends in County Cork.
Notorious for its violence, the 17th century is also a time of sweeping change. Change ignites resistance. When I first started researching Irish history, I was well aware of Cromwell’s march, and soon discovered much more and perhaps worse. How could people survive under constant threat and fear? How could humans justify such cruelty? This book examines several horrific events, the people and the policies that allowed them to happen—in the interest of learning from history that which we should never repeat.
This book examines one of the bloodiest epochs in Irish history. Part one covers the 16th century, revealing how efforts by the Tudor monarchy to curb the powers of the autonomous Irish lords degenerated into a bitter cultural and sectarian conflict characterized by summary killings and massacres. The second part pays particular attention to the 1641Ërebellion and the Confederate Wars.
Most people have not heard of a female playwright before Aphra Behn so I’ve been passionate about restoring the work of Shakespeare’s ‘sisters’, or female contemporaries, to the stage and to public awareness. Early play scripts by women are often dismissed as ‘closet drama’: unperformed, not written for performance, and unperformable. To challenge such assumptions, I staged productions of female-authored plays, most recently Wroth’sLove’s Victory. A good deal of writing about women’s drama now exists, including my book Playing Spaces.I have made this selection to encourage you to discover the plays for yourselves. I hope you enjoy reading, and perhaps watching or acting, them.
This book gives an excellent introduction to women’s involvement in theatre in the age of Shakespeare by making 6 of their texts easily available for the first time.
It publishes Queen Elizabeth I’s translation of a section by Seneca; The Tragedy of Antony(1595), a translation of a French play about Antony and Cleopatra by Mary Sidney Herbert, (aunt to Lady Mary Wroth).
It also publishes three original plays by women: Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam(1613), The Concealed Fancies(1645), by the sisters Elizabeth Brackley and Jane Cavendish, and a valuable edition of Love’s Victory (but in a short section on p. 122 misprints the order of pages in the manuscript).
Cupid’s Banishment(1619) by Robert White is an entertainment, written to be performed by schoolgirls.
Renaissance Drama By Women is a unique volume of plays and documents. For the first time, it demonstrates the wide range of theatrical activity in which women were involved during the Renaissance period. It includes full-length plays, a translated fragment by Queen Elizabeth I, a masque, and a substantial number of historical documents. With full and up-to-date accompanying critical material, this collection of texts is an exciting and invaluable resource for use in both the classroom and research. Special features introduced by the editors include: * introductory material to each play * modernized spellings * extensive notes and annotations *…
I am fascinated by humanity’s search for meaning. That is what I am exploring as I read philosophy and as I write my biographies of extraordinary individuals. Sue Prideaux has written award-winning books on Edvard Munch and his painting The Scream, the playwright August Strindberg, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. She acted as consultant to Sotheby’s when they sold The Scream for a record-breaking $120 million.
Nietzsche said; “Only those with very large lungs have the right to write long sentences.” Montaigne was of the same opinion. He pre-dated Nietzsche in couching his philosophy simply and clearly in short, sharp aphorisms. Like Nietzsche’s aphorisms, they are often very funny.
How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love? How to live?
This question obsessed Renaissance nobleman Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), who wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. Into these essays he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when it was dreaming, events in the appalling civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, readers still come to…
