Genre
Best Novels About the American Civil War
The contemporary American novel keeps returning to the Civil War because the Civil War has not actually ended. These five are the canonical contemporary literary novels about the war and the immediate post-war period, across multiple registers (pastoral-historical, comic-historical, speculative-historical, post-Emancipation-domestic).
5 books on this list.
Cold Mountainby Charles Frazier
5.0“Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 1997 review. A wounded Confederate deserter walks across the Civil-War-era Carolinas to return home. National Book Award 1997 and the basis for the 2003 Minghella film.”
Lincoln in the Bardoby George Saunders
5.0“Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 2017 review. Abraham Lincoln's eleven-year-old son Willie dies and Lincoln returns to the Georgetown cemetery. The Bardo is populated by the cemetery's reluctant dead. Man Booker Prize 2017.”
The Good Lord Birdby James McBride
5.0“The Good Lord Bird by James McBride 2013 review. A twelve-year-old enslaved boy falls in with John Brown in 1856 Kansas and is dressed as a girl named Onion through Harpers Ferry. National Book Award 2013.”
The Underground Railroadby Colson Whitehead
5.0“The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 2016 review. Cora, a slave on a Georgia plantation, escapes north via an actual underground railroad, a literalized version of the metaphor. Pulitzer Prize 2017 and the National Book Award winner that defined the contemporary Black literary moment.”
Belovedby Toni Morrison
5.0“Beloved by Toni Morrison 1987 review. Sethe, a former slave living in Reconstruction-era Ohio, is haunted by the daughter she killed to save from slavery. Pulitzer Prize 1988 and one of the canonical American novels of the late twentieth century.”