Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Tag Archives: historical fiction


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Tea-time with Frankie Drake

I’m sticking to my idea of dropping out of Facebook between 5 and 6.30 PM, and my levels of stress are dropping fast. Just give a wide berth to the socials as people get out of work and pour their frustration online, that’s the trick.

During these 90 minutes of freedom, I’m checking my mail, listening to some music, and maybe watching some TV show. I went through YouTube’s Origin in a week, and right now I’ve found another thing that keeps me happy while I detox from the socials: it’s called Frankie Drake Mysteries, and it’s just my cup of tea.

Which is quite fitting, considering I’m watching it at tea-time, or thereabouts.

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Clio’s Days Off

An interesting question was raised a few days back from my friend Giulia, that manages the Liberi di Scrivere lit blog (only in Italian, sorry).
The question was, more or less

how much leeway do we have when writing historical fiction?

Meaning, how much can we change, distort, manipulate or basically rewrite historical fact to fit our narrative?

Now, I’m sure my friend Claire covered this subject somewhere on her Scribblings blog (and if she did not, she should), and Giulia’s question received lots of answers, some I liked, some I liked a lot less.
And right now I’d like to expand on my answer, that did go more or less like this: Continue reading →


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On the joys of being an avid reader

92324624c6d8489f3ea8c99ff0865f30There was a time when I was a genre reader.
A single genre reader.
Which means I read mostly genre fiction, and mostly a certain genre of fiction – to wit, science fiction and fantasy (in their broader sense).

This changed, dramatically, when I was about eighteen years old.
There was no great epiphany, no great watershed moment, no single book I can nail as the one that opened the floodgates, but basically, when I was eighteen or thereabouts, I simply found out that I loved reading.
I loved stories, I loved the possibility of exploring different places, different characters, different situations.
Who cares about genre labels? Continue reading →


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Tracks in the Snowy Forest

41msnsIInOL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_I’ll ramble a bit, if you don’t mind.
I’ve been looking for Tracks in the Snowy Forest for a while, now, without any luck.
I read a lot about it, summaries, criticism… but I still miss the real thing.
The book, written by Chinese author Qu Bo and published in 1957, was apparently published in English in 1962 – and never reprinted1. Alas, I can’t read Chinese.
The book – a thick affair over 500 pages long – is a historical novel. Or maybe not.
Based on true fact – to wit, the operations of a small unit of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army against warlords and bandit chieftains in North-Eastern China in 1946-1947 – it is nonetheless a novel, a work of fiction, and it was published ten years after the events. The author Qu Bo, took part in that PLA campaign, and the story is therefore based on his first-hand experiences.
Does it count as historical fiction?
Or is it something else – fictionalized autobiography?
Non-fiction novel?
I don’t know.

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Historical details

smitheeI’ve written about historical accuracy and fantasy in the past.
I like doing research for my stories – I happen to read good books and watch interesting video, and have a good excuse to procrastinate, all in the name of quality.

Because if I find absolutely ridiculous the armchair experts on Ancient Warfare or other assorted geeks that evaluate the worth of a story by the serial numbers on the chainmail hauberks, I find equally insufferable the worthless hacks that place Jesuits in the Crusades, or wonder what would have happened had the Egyptians not been defeated by the Roman Empire.
In the age of internet, checking out a few basic facts is pretty easy. Continue reading →