The five best historical novels of all time, according to Lucy Steeds

Lucy Steeds arrived as one of the most exciting debut talents of the year last year with The Artist, a sun-soaked, psychologically charged historical novel set in 1920s Provence. Following an aspiring journalist drawn into the orbit of a reclusive painter and his niece, it became a major bestseller, won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and went on to be named Waterstones Book of the Year.

It also announced Steeds as a writer with a gift for making the past feel vivid and alive. Here, she shares her favourite historical novels that shaped her reading and writing, and that she recommends time and time again…

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

“Whenever I recommend this book I have to add the caveat that, ‘You think you’re not interested in aviation, but by page two you will be gripping the book, white-knuckled, desperate to know every single thing about the history of aeroplanes’.

“This is the story of Marion Graves, a fictional aviator intent on becoming the first person to fly around the earth from North to South. It’s a book about scale, and our wild human ambitions, and takes you across the 20th century and around the world. Think bootleggers in the Midwest, jungles in wartime, and the great eerie ice shelves of the Arctic. It’s a rare, sweeping accomplishment.”

Penguin, £9.99

The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischwili

“Do not be afraid about what I’m about to say next: this book is 944 pages long. I am a slow reader but I gulped it down in a week, such is the pace and gut-wrenching tension of this intergenerational Georgian saga. It’s the story of one nation told through one family, and the ripple effects of individual human choices as well as cataclysmic world events.

“Translated from the original German by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin, there are moments when the storytelling is chatty and light-hearted, and moments so terrifying the hair on my arms still stands up when I think of them. The effect is that by the end of those 944 pages you know these characters as intimately as your own family, and could easily stay with them for another thousand.”

HarperVia, £20

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

“This is a small, intricate barb of a book. It’s 1961, in the quiet of the Dutch countryside. Isabel lives alone in her family house, until one day her carefully ordered life is interrupted by the arrival of her brother’s new girlfriend, Eva, who has come to stay. The two women must live alongside each other, cheek by jowl, their differences rubbing up against each other. But their uncomfortable union smothers a darker connection.

“There is an ominous undercurrent running through the pages of this book, a sense that nothing is quite as it seems. The twist, when it comes, is like a bullet to the heart. It is a poised, poignant book about the darkest moments of Dutch history, and a beautiful paean to love and desire.”

Penguin, £9.99

North Woods by Daniel Mason

“One plot of land. 400 years. This is one of those books that makes you wonder, ‘How has this not been done before?’ Mason grabs you by the hand and pulls you through four centuries of the woods in New England, weaving in and out of the lives of the people who live there.

“Patterns emerge and secrets cover and reveal themselves across the years. Mason has such a keen eye for detail: the apple pip growing through the ribcage of a soldier in one chapter becomes the apple eaten by a different character many years later in a different chapter. It’s a dazzling book about the cycles of nature and the mysteries lying beneath our feet.”

John Murray, £10.99

The Book of Night Women by Marlon James

“This is a terrifying yet mesmerising account of a revolt on a sugar plantation in Jamaica. Marlon James’s writing is so sharp, so piercing and seething, that he propels you straight into the heart of this story about terror, violence and rebellion.

“One of the great values of historical fiction is it can give voice to the voiceless, and James’s voice here is insistent that you do not look away from the horrors of the past. This is a bloody, haunting story. It’s like peeling the past back with a scalpel.”

Oneworld, £10.99

‘The Artist’ by Lucy Steeds is out now in paperback (John Murray, £10.99)