Ten top modern classics of historical fiction

Leah Rachel von Essen is an editor, writer, and book reviewer. She is a copyeditor and fact-checker at Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as a contributing editor, Adult Books, for American Library Association’s magazine Booklist. She writes regularly for Chicago Review of Books and is a senior contributor at Book Riot.

At Book Riot she tagged ten must-read modern classics of historical fiction. One title on the list:

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

A young blind girl named Marie-Laure escapes to the walled city of Saint-Malo as the Nazis invade France, bringing a hidden treasure with them. Meanwhile, a German teen is slowly drawn into the Nazi ranks thanks to his instinctive skill with radios and tech. The two youth illuminate what it was like for kids and teens to try and survive, persist, and come of age in the midst of the violence, fear, and tragedy of World War II. This emotional, lovely work has quickly become a modern-day classic and must-read.

Read about another novel on the list.

All the Light We Cannot See is among Melanie Maure's five top novels about women discovering unimaginable strength through tragedy, Audrey Gale's five top novels about war, Jyoti Patel's top ten books about family secrets, Kimi Cunningham Grant's top six books featuring father-daughter relationships, Liz Boulter's top ten novels about France, Emily Temple's fifty best contemporary novels over 500 pages, Jason Allen's seven top books with family secrets, Whitney Scharer's top ten books about Paris, David Baldacci's six favorite books with an element of mystery, Jason Flemyng's six best books, Sandra Howard's six best books, Caitlin Kleinschmidt's twelve moving novels of the Second World War and Maureen Corrigan's 12 favorite books of 2014.

--Marshal Zeringue