peculating about what happened becomes an art form if it comes from writers like Alexander Dumas, Charles Dickens, Lev Tolstoy, Victor Hugo or the recently deceased Hilary Mantel.

Among these, Dumas was a novelist of high adventure, with novels like The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers to his name. When I was trying to learn English during college, abridged and simplified English translations of Dumas’s novels inspired me to read complete books later. In Monte Cristo, the story begins the day that Napoleon left his first island exile in 1815 and covers historical events from 1815 to 1840 – the era of the Bourbon Restoration. Though it is primarily an adventure story, the historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. The Three Musketeers is set between 1625 and 1628, recounting the adventures of a young man who befriends three formidable musketeers in Paris.

Charles Dickens was more of a social critic than a writer of historical novels. A Tale of Two Cities has become one of my favourite novels over the decades; and its film versions, one can enjoy multiple times. The 1935 version with Donald Coleman as Sydney Carton was perhaps the best, though Dirk Bogarde also did justice to the character in 1958. Two Cities is set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The conditions that lead to the revolution and the Reign of Terror come alive in the novel; it is also an adventure novel, like the ones Dumas wrote.

Interestingly, Dickens and Dumas died the same year in 1870, though Dickens was ten years younger, dying at just 58. Hugo and Tolstoy were much greater writers than many of their contemporaries. Hugo was more of a romantic writer than anything else. Still, his most famous works, such as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Miserables – written 30 years later – have history and romance go together. His play Cromwell, which he wrote at the age of 25, deals with the history and politics of England in the mid-1700s.

In his masterpiece and arguably the most remarkable novel in world literature, War and Peace, Lev Tolstoy mixes fictional narratives with chapters on history and philosophy. He chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the Napoleonic era’s impact on early 19th-Century Russian society. More than history, he narrates the story of five Russian aristocratic families. Large sections in the later chapters of War and Peace test the reader’s patience with philosophical discussions rather than the narrative. As a novelist, he appears to be more successful in Anna Karenina.

Hilary Mantel, who died in September 2022 at 70, is much more of a historically oriented novelist than any of the above-mentioned writers. Her research is immaculate, and her prose flows with a seamless narrative. My friend Faisal Buzdar introduced me to her novels by presenting me with Wolf Hall, published in 2009. The book is about Thomas Cromwell, one of the chancellors Henry VIII put to death after taking full advantage of his talents. As a history buff, I have watched The Private life of Henry VIII (1933) and The Six wives of Henry VIII (1970), but the best depiction of that period I found was in Anne of the thousand days (1969).

After reading Wolf Hall, it was natural to look for more of her work, and I found two of her earlier novels immensely gripping: Eight months on Ghazzah Street (1988) and A Place of Greater Safety (1992), which are placed in different settings. The first is a bold and honest novel about how Saudi Arabia treated women in the 1980s when Hilary Mantel lived there for a few years with her husband. The book exposes an apartheid-like situation for women in the oil-rich kingdom. The novel is more biographical than anything else and accurately depicts women’s suffocating lives in the Kingdom.

Mahasweta Devi once remarked, “If you want to know what happened, read history; if you want to know how it felt, read literature.” 

A Place of Greater Safety takes you to that swirl of events unfolding during the French revolution. It is full of passion and tragedies that put lives on the guillotine. If you like A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, you will love this novel by Hilary Mantel. She did meticulous research by going through the decrees of that time in the pages of newspapers and other documents, which perhaps Dickens never did. Dickens was much closer to the events and writing just a few decades after the French Revolution; he appears to have relied more on first-hand accounts than historical documents.

If you are a fan of French literature, you may also recall a series of volumes by Alexander Dumas starting with Joseph Belsamo, but both Dickens and Dumas present people in a fleeting manner. At the same time, Mantel, working at a much greater remove, touches upon the most principal figures of the Revolution that become the main characters in her novel A Place of Greater Safety. Mantel’s events are much more accurate; even some dialogues and letters come from authentic sources. It is a pretty successful novel that does not bore the reader even for a single page.

Mantel’s most notable accomplishment is her trilogy comprising Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012) and The Mirror and the Light (2020). All three novels were published to huge critical acclaim and became bestsellers, but unlike most bestsellers, Mantel’s books are of high historical and literary merit. Her storytelling is darkly inventive as she depicts unhappy episodes with a simultaneous detachment and relish. She mastered the craft of making the reader’s flesh creep with horror. From the 16th Century England to the 18th Century France and 20th Century Saudi Arabia, she often sets her stories against sinister political tyranny.

In the 21st Century English writing, Mantel emerged as a pretty strong stylist who could express a great deal concisely. The diversity of her interests and the subject matter is impressive. Unlike many other writers, she does not make a clear or straightforward division between good and evil. However, she presents a lot of evil in the events and personalities. She does not philosophise as Tolstoy did nor sprinkle her novels with swashbuckling characters the way Dumas did. Perhaps in literary merit, she is a notch lower than Dickens, but for historical accuracy and narrative, she is on a higher pedestal.

At times she turns out to be much more annoying and even horrific in her approach, and as opposed to philosophy, she leans more towards the psychology of her characters. But she is always successful in sustaining her readers’ interest, which even Tolstoy could not do, especially in his magnum opus. She is a master of summing up a character or a situation as her characters muddle through their fate.

While reading these novels, one feels like living in Henry’s court and travelling with his entourage. Hilary Mantel was the first woman to twice win the Booker Prize. She gives her readers unparalleled insights that one typically misses in many history books.

I keep quoting Mahasweta Devi, who once remarked, “If you want to know what happened, read history; if you want to know how it felt, read literature.”

Hilary Mantel made you feel it.

The writer is an educationist based in Islamabad. He can be reached at Mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk and tweets @NaazirMahmood