Historical fiction · ~1960–2000

Late 20th century historical fiction

Late 20th century historical fiction (~1960–2000): Recent past as historical fiction. Late twentieth-century settings still count as historical fiction when the past is researched and reconstructed. Browse recent-past shelves on HisFic.

Plan this era as a journey Bestsellers & decade ratings

Curated on HisFic (17)

Hand-picked titles from HisFic's catalog tagged for this era.

The Women
Kristin Hannah
A young American nurse serves in Vietnam and struggles to be seen when she comes home.
Cold War · Late 20th century · Military & war · Family saga
Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi
Linked stories follow two half-sisters’ lineages across centuries of African and American history.
Early modern · Victorian / Gilded Age · Family saga · Literary
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee
Four generations of a Korean family navigate life under Japanese rule and in Japan.
World War II era · Cold War · Family saga · Literary
The Help
Kathryn Stockett
Black maids and a young white writer risk everything to tell the truth about life in 1960s Mississippi.
Cold War · Late 20th century · Literary · Family saga
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
A boyhood betrayal in Kabul echoes through war, exile, and a chance at redemption.
Cold War · Late 20th century · Literary · Family saga
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler
On her twenty-sixth birthday in 1976 Los Angeles, Dana Franklin is yanked to a Maryland plantation whenever Rufus Weylin, a red-haired boy who will grow up to enslave her ancestors, is about to die—and she has to keep him alive or never be born. Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 novel is time-slip historical fiction of the early nineteenth-century South: each stay is longer, her white husband Kevin is stranded with her, and the past does not return her whole.
Regency / Napoleonic · Late 20th century · Time-slip · Literary
The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver
An evangelical family arrives in the Congo on the eve of independence—told through the daughters’ voices.
Cold War · Late 20th century · Family saga · Literary
Sarah's Key
Tatiana de Rosnay
In July 1942 Paris, ten-year-old Sarah Starzynski is arrested with her parents in the Vél' d'Hiv roundup—but not before she locks her little brother in a cupboard, promising to come back. In 2002, American journalist Julia Jarmond, assigned to the sixtieth anniversary, traces Sarah’s apartment into her own French in-laws’ history. Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel is WWII dual-timeline historical fiction of occupied Paris, a child’s promise, and a family secret that will not stay buried.
World War II era · Late 20th century · Time-slip · Literary
Gain
Richard Powers
A corporation’s rise and a woman’s illness braid American industrial history (SAH Prize 1999).
Victorian / Gilded Age · Cold War · Literary · Family saga
In the Lake of the Woods
Tim O'Brien
A politician’s marriage unravels under the shadow of Vietnam (SAH Prize 1995).
Cold War · Late 20th century · Literary · Mystery
News of the Dead
James Robertson
A Highland glen’s stories across centuries of saints, strangers, and secrets (Walter Scott Prize 2022).
Medieval · Early modern · Literary · Time-slip
On Canaan's Side
Sebastian Barry
An Irishwoman looks back across a century of war, migration, and loss (Walter Scott Prize 2012).
World War I era · Cold War · Literary · Family saga
The Cattle Killing
John Edgar Wideman
Linked narratives of plague, prophecy, and Black life across centuries (SAH Prize 1997).
Early modern · Late 20th century · Literary · Time-slip
There There
Tommy Orange
Urban Native lives converge toward a powwow in Oakland (SAH Prize 2019).
Late 20th century · Cold War · Literary · Family saga
Birdsong
Sebastian Faulks
Stephen Wraysford’s prewar love affair in Amiens is swallowed by the Somme, the tunnels under the Western Front, and the unmaking of a generation. A later strand follows his granddaughter as she tries to recover what the Great War buried.
World War I era · Late 20th century · Military & war · Literary
Possession
A. S. Byatt
In the London Library, researcher Roland Michell finds unsigned drafts of a letter from the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, traces them to the poet Christabel LaMotte, and with Maud Bailey follows a correspondence from their secret affair that the academy has never seen. A. S. Byatt’s 1990 novel is Victorian time-slip historical fiction of that affair’s 1859 crisis, and of the late-1980s academics who cross London, Yorkshire, and Brittany to possess the proof.
Victorian / Gilded Age · Late 20th century · Time-slip · Literary
Time and Again
Jack Finney
In 1970 advertising artist Si Morley joins a secret project that reaches the past by self-hypnosis, and from a room in the Dakota he steps into the New York winter of 1882 to trace the half-burned letter Kate cannot explain. Jack Finney’s 1970 novel is Victorian time-slip historical fiction of gaslight Manhattan, the mystery attached to that letter, and a man who falls in love with Julia on the wrong side of a century.
Victorian / Gilded Age · Late 20th century · Time-slip · Mystery