The five best historical novels, according to Victoria Hislop

Open a Victoria Hislop novel and it feels as though you’ve stepped through a portal into the past. From her multi-million-copy bestselling debut The Island, set around the leprosy colony of Spinalonga, to stories of war, occupation and political upheaval, she has made a career of turning turbulent chapters of Mediterranean history into vivid, deeply human fiction. As she releases her latest – The Wine-Dark Sea, a spellbinding story with the Greek Civil War as its backdrop – Hislop reveals the five historical novels which have shaped her life and writing… War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy “I finally read this during lockdown, when lack of time was no longer an excuse not to, and it completely immersed me from the very first page to the last. It was the moment when I realised you should never judge a book either by its cover or its length – a long book can be a short one if it’s gripping enough. “What held me spellbound was not the history of the Napoleonic Wars or the French invasion of Russia but the experience of these events as lived by the characters, in particular Bezukhov and Bolkonsky. Their characters are so well drawn, so alluring that they still live with me six years on. Of course, it’s a love story too, moving from the intimate and the domestic to the great canvas of battle. Perhaps it’s the greatest historical fiction ever written; certainly my top ever.” Penguin Classics, £12.99 Pompeii by Robert Harris “The test of a great historical novel is that you actually know what is going to happen, but despite that, the narration keeps you on the edge of your seat. It’s an impressive feat to pull off. I knew that Mount Vesuvius is going to erupt and destroy all in its path, but still, in Pompeii, the characters are living through those moments and as a reader, you are willing them to survive. “Harris’s genius is in the depth of his research and yet the lightness with which he conveys it to us on the page. In this story, the details of the engineering surrounding the aqueduct give us a sense of real intimacy with the situation and the characters. When Vesuvius eventually erupts catastrophically, you are still in a state of shock. It’s astonishing.” Arrow, £9.99 Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernieres “This novel is set during the final years of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century in a mixed community of Greek Orthodox and Muslim Turks in what was formerly known as Asia Minor (now Turkey). The history is complex but after a war between Greece and Turkey, a treaty in 1923 dictated that all the Greek Orthodox should leave for Greece itself, leaving places where they had lived empty. “The characters are vivid, sometimes humorous, many of them wise – including Iskander, who is a potter. It’s his words that give us the title: ‘Man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrows.’ It’s a line of pure poetry. “I think this is de Berniere’s best book and it touched me so enormously I had to visit the abandoned town in Turkey of Kayakoy near Fetiye on which the story is based. It was full of ghosts, just as I imagined it would be and both the book and the place still haunt me.” Vintage, £10.99 The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Emily Wilson) “Here was another story, rather like War and Peace, that I thought I might never get round to reading – but when I did, I was so glad. The ancient text is brought so compellingly to life by Wilson that it becomes a page-turner. Lots of us have been reminded by the Nolan film of some of Odysseus’s adventures, but the original epic is much richer and with many more episodes than the film. “More importantly, on the page it gave me far more opportunity to understand the actual character of the man himself and his inner questioning. There is always a big confusion about whether Homer based his story on anything factual. Most of it is fantastical, but he was almost certainly inspired by actual conflicts that had happened in the region.” W W Norton & Co, £14.99 Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracey Chevalier “I think this novel changed how I look at art. It’s a fictional account about the young woman we see gazing out at us from one of Johannes Vermeer’s great paintings. Chevalier is brilliant at taking something that’s real and imagining all the circumstances around the moment or the situation. Her very ordinary girl, a maid called Griet, who models for the artist wearing an incongruous and precious pearl earring, is an immensely alluring character; both sad and mysterious. “While I was reading it, I never for a second felt that I was reading anything that wasn’t the truth. Griet’s gaze, not only because of the reproduction of the painting on the cover, made me think so much more about what lies behind the oil paint on a canvas. My battered copy is one of my most treasured books.” HarperCollins, £9.99 ‘The Wine-Dark Sea’ by Victoria Hislop is out now (Headline Review, £22)