History from the Mid-1990s and the Post-2000 Boom

This chapter considers the way that reading and writing historical fiction has expanded almost exponentially in the past two or three decades. The form is now huge, popular, global and widespread, highly influential and rendered in an astonishing number of forms, subgenres, and formats. Always important, the historical novel is now one of the preeminent genres in the world in terms of readership and authorship. The transgressive, experimental nature of the form has transfigured and evolved in remarkable ways. The chapter considers the ways that new forms and modes have evolved the genre. What does this expansion mean for the historical novel now? In particular, the chapter looks at new genres and new reading and writing practices to ascertain what the historical novel means now, and how it is read written, consumed, and imagined in multiple new spaces and contexts. This chapter has thorough analysis of work by Hilary Mantel, Thomas Pynchon, W. G. Sebald, Ali Smith, Ursula le Guin, R. F. Kuang, and Abir Mukherjee. There is a brief outline of the new contexts for writing and reading historical fiction such as BookTok, creative writing courses, historical fiction prizes, and societies for authors. There is discussion of key new genres such as crime fiction, fantasy, alternative history, rewriting, and the neo-historical.