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Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.


anilEhilated posted:

It's a good read as long as you remember that his main goal was to make a story of pure virtuous Christians and their morally corrupt oppressors to prop up Polish national pride. That makes his treatment of the historic aspects is a bit selective - don't get me wrong, he clearly did a lot of research, but there was a conscious decision to not show stuff like, say, violence between different Christian sects.

It's all very bombastic and tragic and has good character work (apart from a couple of absolute caricatures) that's still easy to relate to. If you're looking for a fun read you'll get that out of it.

Yeah, I'm seeing that, what with (I think) are supposed to be references to the Alexemenos graffiti, and the like. But would you say me picking up on an anti-Semitic reading of Chilon Chilonedes is accurate, or just me being very cynical?

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anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Samovar posted:

Yeah, I'm seeing that, what with (I think) are supposed to be references to the Alexemenos graffiti, and the like. But would you say me picking up on an anti-Semitic reading of Chilon Chilonedes is accurate, or just me being very cynical?
Chilon has some character development (although it is an extremely predictable change) but the anti-Semitic interpretation is quite possible even if probably accidental on the author's part since there are actual Jewish characters in the book and I honestly don't recall any of them being displayed in a positive light and Jews in general being depicted as hating the Christians.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Mar 16, 2024

Onionetta
Aug 16, 2009
I am a big fan of C.J. Sansom's Shardlake series: the titular lawyer finds himself dragged into cases of murder, espionage and skulduggery that always end up involving contentious issues of politics and religion in the court of Henry VII. Great writing, great characters, and a great combination of my two favourite genres: historical fiction and murder mystery.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

Onionetta posted:

I am a big fan of C.J. Sansom's Shardlake series: the titular lawyer finds himself dragged into cases of murder, espionage and skulduggery that always end up involving contentious issues of politics and religion in the court of Henry VII. Great writing, great characters, and a great combination of my two favourite genres: historical fiction and murder mystery.

There are an insane number of these set in the Roman empire. (I imagine there are some from every historical era.) So many, in fact, that I can't even remember which one I read. I don't like detective stories so I didn't get super far into it though. But if you like historical fiction and murder mysteries, you could read nothing but those for the rest of your life.

parara
Apr 9, 2010
Roma Sub Rosa comes to mind especially!

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FPyat
Jan 17, 2020
Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers is the only Old Testament historical (?) fiction I know of. Is there anything else?

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