That was the question asked by my lecture during a class a year ago. That lecture mentioned that both are written works. It has author/authors, settings, plot, and characters. So, it may as well be a fiction. However that statement might anger historian for they think that a certain history truly happened in the past even without strong evidence and only relied on literature. There’s even a wisdom saying “ History is written by the victors”. This supports the idea that we rarely gets to hear the other side of the history, the losing side. And often, general public forget about it.

My love to history started with reading my grandfather’s collection of books from Time-LIFE publisher which is owned by Time media. He had almost all collections. For instance, The Life Science series has 24 volumes, World War II has 40 volumes, etc. These were a lot of books. I digested them as a kid despite not truly understanding in political levels and its implication to real life.

As a kid, I would visit my grandfather on Sunday and spent my time reading whatever I could. Then, I fancied ancient Greek civilization and also ancient Japanese. But western war stories captivated me the most.

I especially love WWI and WWII stories. The book had pictures that tells more words and even more profound. This led me learned the western history despite not being taught at class and only got a very tiny exposure from it. While formally, I only learned the Indonesia and Asian history and the Colonization. I am not too fond reading that part. But when it comes to Indonesia, I tend to read the glory of the ancient civilization, long before the Portuguese sets its foot in Indonesia. The ancient history of Indonesia was so grand that even an Indonesian kingdom called Majapahit was able to expand their territory up to Madagascar. There are ancient monuments built around 6-7 M that stood still until today which even a modern architecture would not comparable those buildings.

So then, I started growing love to historical fiction in my 10th grade when I read a novel titled Pompeii by Robert Harris. It captivated me and got me wondering if such events truly happened. I deep dived to find the truth. I learned that those type of books was called “ Historical Fiction”. It is a genre of a novel that was written based on a character and events in the past. The critics in this field defined that historical fiction is a work that is written at least 25 years before. It means that the events took 25 years following the novel. In that genre, there are some sub-genres and that is something I want to mention about today.

When I was in high school, I regularly went to the city’s library. There, they often held a book fair. There were so many books to choose from but my interest was always either conspiracy, religion, symbolism, politic, philosophy, programming and history. These books were often more than my allowance could afford. However, there would often always be the sale section which was more suited to my allowance. In that section, I found some flashy books with provoking design. I was curious what kind of books were they. Then I picked up an author named Lisa Kleypas. The very first book I bought was only in your arms. I finished the book in a day and I want to know the continuation of the story. It turned out, the book I had was part of a family saga. These books was filled with interesting history trivia, cultural events, details on dresses, way of life among others. Shortly, I spent my saving buying the whole volume from Lisa Kleypas series.

From her, I found other authors such as Amanda Quick and Jane feather. While Lisa Kleypas talks about Duke and Duchess, there’s Johanna Lindsey who writes about the New World. It was interesting to read about cowboys and settlers story. I read these while in high school and later when I study English literature, these helped me easier to ace my exams without studying.

Later when I moved out from the house, I only brought some that I really liked, including a book of Greek civilization. The illustration that I showed was something my little cousin took. It was some collections that I left home.
As a student in English literature, I honestly didn’t get to read much of these. We studied basic novels that American kids would read in their 9th grade or 10th grade. Even I have read some of the works introduced in the class long before. To make up my boredom, I spent my first semester delving into understanding the work of Plato. I read more philosophical books than ever and that got lead me to knowing modern philosophers like Ayn Rand.

That was the time, I found something so exciting more than Karl Marx. When I studied Karl Marx in high school, I felt that his ideology was interesting especially when it comes to human-God relation. Unlike some American I happened to met who got exposure to Libertarian ideas in high school and turn into centrist later in life, my first exposure was Karl Marx, Engels and its friend. I read plenty books that deals with socialism and communism philosophy. All was because I tried to find a justification to my godless experience and how I could further explain it to my family and friends. I think my understanding was shallow then for I don’t actually think further beyond the human-religion connection. Only from the last couple of years, I learned about Marx in economy- political level that it doesn’t suit my way of life. So, my search got me into Ayn Rand. Despite she writes her ideas in a form of novel, I think the ideas are intriguing even if it only offers perhaps partial answer and approach to all lives problem and complexity.

Oh well, I ended up talking so much. Anyway, let me know if you also like historical fiction and history in the comment section.