Historical fiction · ~1910–1920

World War I historical fiction books

World War I era historical fiction (~1910–1920): Great War, home fronts, shattered empires. Great War fiction spans trenches, hospitals, and shattered empires. Find novels that match the tone you want: battlefield, home front, or aftermath.

Plan this era as a journey Bestsellers & decade ratings

Curated on HisFic (11)

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

All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque
German soldiers experience the brutal reality of World War I trenches.
World War I era · Military & war · Literary
East of Eden
John Steinbeck
From the Civil War to the Great War, the Hamiltons and the Trasks settle the Salinas Valley, and two generations of brothers replay Cain and Abel—land, a woman named Cathy, and the Hebrew word timshel, thou mayest. John Steinbeck’s novel is Gilded Age family-saga historical fiction of California: a valley’s making, and a family’s argument with fate.
Victorian / Gilded Age · Civil War · Family saga · Literary
The Alice Network
Kate Quinn
In 1947 a pregnant American college student hunts for a missing Frenchwoman and collides with Eve Gardiner, a damaged veteran of a real World War I spy ring. Dual timelines braid the Alice Network’s 1915 missions in occupied France with a postwar reckoning.
World War I era · Cold War · Time-slip · Military & war
Bone by Bone
Peter Matthiessen
Edgar Watson’s Florida frontier legend completed (SAH Prize co-winner 2001).
World War I era · Literary · Adventure & epic
Loving Frank
Nancy Horan
Mamah Borthwick’s affair with Frank Lloyd Wright (SAH Prize 2009).
World War I era · Biographical · Romance
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
Remember Ben Clayton
Stephen Harrigan
A sculptor memorializes a rancher’s son killed in WWI (SAH Prize 2013).
World War I era · Interwar · Literary
The Last Town on Earth
Thomas Mullen
A mill town quarantines itself against the 1918 flu (SAH Prize 2007).
World War I era · Literary · Military & war
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
Life After Life
Kate Atkinson
Ursula Todd is born in 1910 and dies—then is born again, and again—through the Spanish flu, a London Blitz that may or may not kill her, and lives that reach as far as Hitler’s Germany. Kate Atkinson’s Costa-winning novel is WWII time-slip historical fiction of one Englishwoman’s many lives, and the question of whether a second chance can change the war.
World War II era · World War I era · Time-slip · Literary
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
On the Italian front in World War I, American ambulance driver Frederic Henry falls in love with British nurse Catherine Barkley as the Caporetto retreat unravels the army around them. Hemingway’s 1929 novel is Great War historical fiction stripped to weather, wounds, and a private peace that cannot hold.
World War I era · Military & war · Literary