In recent years many novelists have become increasingly interested in history as fiction and fiction as history. In her powerful opening essays – “Fathers,” “Forefathers” and “Ancestors” – A.S. Byatt considers the renaissance of the historical novel. She focuses on novels of wartime experience, the surprising variety of the distant pasts British writers have invented, and the new “Darwinian novel,” stimulated in part by the discovery of DNA. These themes afford new readings of writers from Elizabeth Bowen and Henry Greene to Anthony Burgess, William Golding and Muriel Spark, and other contemporary authors.

A fascinating essay explores Byatt’s own translation of historical fact into fiction in the two novellas – Angels and Insects . She skillfully addresses the recent European revival of interest in myth, folktale and fairytale, and the recurring attraction to themes such as The Arabian Nights , or tales involving ice, snow and glass. Vivid, profound and full of original insights, Histories and Stories redraws the boundaries of fiction today.