Schindler's List

Based on a true story: a Slovakian Jew forced to tattoo prisoners at Auschwitz falls in love against impossible odds.

A blind French girl and a German boy’s paths converge in occupied Saint-Malo during World War II.

In March 1939 the Kurc family gathers for Passover in Radom, Poland; by autumn the war has scattered Sol and Nechuma’s children from the ghetto to a Siberian camp, occupied France, and a refugee ship bound for Brazil. Georgia Hunter’s 2017 novel is World War II saga historical fiction of the years they spend trying to stay alive and find one another, drawn from the author’s own family.

In the autumn of 1941 a German U-boat commander—the Old Man—and his crew leave the French coast for another Battle of the Atlantic patrol, hunting supply ships through storms while destroyers and depth charges hunt them. Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s 1973 novel (English translation) is World War II military historical fiction of that boat: a war correspondent aboard, weeks underwater, and a crew the Atlantic is more likely to keep than to send home.

Nine-year-old Bruno is moved from Berlin to a lonely house beside a fence his sister calls Out-With; from his window he sees people in striped pajamas, and he makes a secret friend named Shmuel on the other side. John Boyne’s 2006 novel is WWII Holocaust historical fiction told as a child’s fable: a friendship through the wire at Auschwitz, and a title readers still search by name.

On the Mediterranean island of Pianosa in 1944, bombardier John Yossarian is told he can be grounded if he is crazy, and that asking to be grounded proves he is sane, while Colonel Cathcart raises the number of missions again. Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel is World War II military historical fiction of an American bomber squadron, the rule they call Catch-22, and a man the paperwork will not let leave the war.