Undoing History

This final chapter of the book looks at the ways that historical fiction can be used to challenge, undermine, change, reconfigure, and reassess the past and the ways that the past is presented in the present. Throughout this book the argument has been made that the transgressive, experimental, strange, and innovative quality of the form has allowed writers to imagine anew and reconfigure their thinking and that of their readers. Whilst some critics of the contemporary historical novel see it shorn of political significance, the work considered in this chapter mitigates against such a reading. Historical fiction provides a space for political intervention and reclamation, for innovation and destabilisation. Historical novels enable an audience to rethink the past and understand the present. Constant evolution and transgression are twin aspects of the form’s history and enduring popularity. The book has argued that these radical aspects of the form drive its development. Yet this formal and historiographical radicalism is also ‘radical’, allowing the world to be understood and reconfigured. The experimentalism underlined throughout this book is a political act, a reimagining of what was that allows a rethinking of what might be. The chapter has sections on Senegalese historical fiction, trans and queer writing, rewriting as political action, postcolonial writing, climate emergency, and Critical Race Theory. The chapter considers in detail writers including Sarah Waters, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Amitav Ghosh, Chinua Achebe, Toni Morrison, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jean Rhys, Walter Mosley, Yaa Gyasi, and Percival Everett.