The Best Historical Fiction of 2024

Maybe it’s the luck of the publishing draw, maybe the emotional weather, but my choices for the 10 best historical novels seem to have more bite than in past years. Here they are, ready to be argued about, in alphabetical order.

Black Butterflies

By Priscilla Morris

A searing portrait of the siege of Sarajevo during the early months of the Bosnian war, as experienced by an artist who, having sent her family to safety in England, becomes stranded in her beloved city while daily life descends into a desperate struggle for survival. Although her studio has been destroyed in the relentless bombing and she has lost touch with her husband and daughter, she finds solace in the tenacity of her friends and neighbors.

Burma Sahib

By Paul Theroux

In the autumn of 1922, a 19-year-old Etonian named Eric Blair becomes an officer in the British forces ruling over the Burmese sector of the Raj. Expecting to find himself through his work, instead he discovers just how ill-suited he is to the whole imperial project. Theroux’s nicely sardonic evocation of these few years suggests that the tensions and hypocrisy of colonial life played an important part in forming the writer who would soon be known as George Orwell.