17 Best historical books like Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Cover of Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Light Perpetual

By: Francis Spufford

3.68

Format: 336 pages, Paperback

From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, an “extraordinary…symphonic……

If you liked the historical plot in Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford , here is a list of 17 books like this:

Cover of Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

1. Quartet in Autumn

By: Barbara Pym

3.90

Format: 186 pages, Paperback

This is the story of four people in late middle-age - Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia - whose chief… read more

Similar categories in Barbara Pym's Quartet in Autumn book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • british literature
Cover of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

2. Small Things Like These

By: Claire Keegan

4.18

Format: 128 pages, Hardcover

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal me… read more

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
"Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people."

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

"for people were bound, he knew, to reveal not only themselves, but what they knew, in conversation"

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

"And then the nights came on and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary."

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

"When he reached the yard gate and found the padlock seized with frost, he felt the strain of being alive and wished he had stayed in bed, but he made himself carry on and crossed to a neighbour’s hou…"

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

Cover of Prophet Song by Paul    Lynch

3. Prophet Song

By: Paul Lynch

4.10

Format: 259 pages, Kindle Edition

A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internat… read more

Similar categories in Paul Lynch's Prophet Song book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • war
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"people are entitled to some small moment of peace."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"the child absorbing the mother’s trauma and storing it in his body for later use,"

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"... time is at once addition and subtraction, time adds one day to the next and always takes away from what's left..."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"...knowing how it is so that all boys grow up and pull away from home to unmake the world in the guise of making it, nature decrees it so."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Cover of Caledonian Road by Andrew O'Hagan

4. Caledonian Road

By: Andrew O'Hagan

3.96

Format: 608 pages, Hardcover

A biting portrait of British class, politics, and money told through five interconnected families a… read more

Similar categories in Andrew O'Hagan's Caledonian Road book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry

5. Old God's Time

By: Sebastian Barry

3.85

Format: 261 pages, Hardcover

From the two-time Booker Prize finalist author, a dazzlingly written novel exploring love, memory, … read more

Similar categories in Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"Per ell aquest era el sentit de la jubilació, de l'existència: estar-se immòbil, feliç i inútil"

-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

"Per ell aquest era el sentit de la jubilació, de l'existència: estar-de immòbil, feliç i inútil"

-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

"No one minds life as long as they are not trying to leave it. Nor death, as long as they are not dying."

-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

Cover of Bournville by Jonathan Coe

6. Bournville

By: Jonathan Coe

3.81

Format: 354 pages, Hardcover

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Middle England comes a profoundly moving, brutally fu… read more

Similar categories in Jonathan Coe's Bournville book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright

7. The Wren, the Wren

By: Anne Enright

3.55

Format: 278 pages, Hardcover

An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of… read more

Similar categories in Anne Enright's The Wren, the Wren book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"It's not that I think about him constantly, he is my way of thinking. His mind is my compass, his eyes my only mirror."

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don’t walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don't walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

Cover of The Romantic by William  Boyd

8. The Romantic

By: William Boyd

4.15

Format: 451 pages, Paperback

Set in the 19th century, The Romantic is the story of life itself. Following the roller-coaster for… read more

Similar categories in William Boyd's The Romantic book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Lessons by Ian McEwan

9. Lessons

By: Ian McEwan

4.00

Format: 448 pages, Hardcover

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, … read more

Similar categories in Ian McEwan's Lessons book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
"Books are difficult to tidy. Hard to chuck out. They resist."

-Ian McEwan, Lessons

"Only the backward look, the well-researched history could tell peaks and troughs from portals."

-Ian McEwan, Lessons

"What must it be, to burst out of deep infant sleep into the shocking singular fact of existence."

-Ian McEwan, Lessons

"The years slid over old deaths like a heavy lid. Nearly everything that happens to you in life you forget. Should have kept a journal."

-Ian McEwan, Lessons

Cover of This Other Eden by Paul Harding

10. This Other Eden

By: Paul Harding

3.78

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

Set at the beginning of the twentieth century and inspired by historical events, This Other Eden te… read more

Similar categories in Paul Harding's This Other Eden book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

11. Treacle Walker

By: Alan Garner

3.13

Format: 152 pages, Hardcover

Treacle Walker is a stunning fusion of myth and folklore and an exploration of the fluidity of time… read more

Similar categories in Alan Garner's Treacle Walker book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • fiction
  • novels
  • fantasy
  • audiobook
Cover of Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

12. Birnam Wood

By: Eleanor Catton

3.82

Format: 432 pages, Hardcover

Birnam Wood is on the move . . . Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening gro… read more

Similar categories in Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"...wondering, not for the first time, when exactly she had become so technologically dependent that her first instinct in every unpredicted circumstance was to outsource her imagination to her phone."

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"Not at all,’ he said. ‘I was just going to remark that being a cliche can be very useful. You ought to consider it some time.’ ’Oh yeah?’ ’Yeah,’ he said. ‘It means people underestimate you. They thi…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"As his rhetoric and reading life matured, he grew intensely scornful of what passed at his high school for 'education' - the mania for testing; the intolerance of real dissent; and the conformist cel…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"... his future, had either been sold or laid to waste by his parents' generation, trapping him in a perpetual adolescence that was further heightened by the infantilising unreality of the Internet as…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

Cover of The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

13. The Bee Sting

By: Paul Murray

3.96

Format: 656 pages, Hardcover

From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and … read more

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Cover of The Fraud by Zadie Smith

14. The Fraud

By: Zadie Smith

3.30

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

The extraordinary first historical novel from bestselling author of White Teeth Zadie Smith It i… read more

Similar categories in Zadie Smith's The Fraud book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
"Eliza had long understood her cousin to be beyond the reach of editorial intervention."

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"What possesses people? Unhappiness, always. Happiness is otherwise occupied. It has an object on which to focus. It has daisies, it has snowdrifts. Unhappiness opens up the void, which then requires …"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"I know this country well. Well enough to understand that justice takes time, and that the freedoms of a minority are rarely self-evident to the majority. What is perfectly selfevident to God is – unf…"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"God preserve me from novel-writing, thought Mrs Touchet. God preserve me from that tragic indulgence, that useless vanity, that blindness! In a cold dormitory, two hundred miles away, three heartbrok…"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

Cover of Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

15. Shrines of Gaiety

By: Kate Atkinson

3.85

Format: 439 pages, Hardcover

London 1926. Roaring Twenties. Corruption. Seduction. Debts due. In a country still recovering … read more

Similar categories in Kate Atkinson's Shrines of Gaiety book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
"The library had not been a career choice. After all, who would choose to be a librarian?"

-Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety

"His head was always in the clouds. 'I'm writing a novel,' he told her. As if that was something to crow about. As if there weren't enough novels in the world already."

-Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety

Cover of Cuddy by Benjamin Myers

16. Cuddy

By: Benjamin Myers

4.33

Format: 447 pages, Hardcover

Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patr… read more

Similar categories in Benjamin Myers's Cuddy book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
"Some say owls carry within them the souls of those who in life never had a name, a place or a purpose, and were cast out to wander alone. Some say their stained-glass eyes are windows into other worl…"

-Benjamin Myers, Cuddy

Cover of Wild Houses by Colin  Barrett

17. Wild Houses

By: Colin Barrett

3.78

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

A darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and sma… read more

Similar categories in Colin Barrett's Wild Houses book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"What you are in, Dev, is a holding pattern, only you're not holding out for anything."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"All boys, all children, are capable of cruelty at the right juncture of opportunity and circumstance, but only a few become committed prodigies of sadism..."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"In the dream, exactly as he had in real life, he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the shapeless, prospectless days to come, days when there would be no need to get out of bed or brush his teet…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"He looked around the empty kitchen. A part of him wanted this of course. A part of him had always wanted this, to be alone, away from even the prospect of any demand upon him to talk, to interact, to…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

Cover of Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy

18. Soldier Sailor

By: Claire Kilroy

4.10

Format: 256 pages, ebook

Well, Sailor. Here we are once more, you and me in one another's arms. The Earth rotates beneath us… read more

Similar categories in Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"I laughed and then we were doing that thing again, our thing: laughing into one another's eyes. All that time I had thought I was jollying you along when all that time you were jollying along me."

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"I tell my husband about my childhood and he tells me about his but it isn't the same. We can never know each other as we were then. But I know you. I will see the child you were in the man you will b…"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"Hated cling film. Hated it more than I hated kinetic sand. Defeated by something that lacked a third dimension. While I'd been off tinkering on the cerebral plane, the smart money has been mastering …"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"I knelt down to pick up the hatchling to . . . . what? Give it back to its mother? Here is your dying chick? Just before I made contact with it, she dive-bombed me. The mother actually dive-bombed me…"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

Cover of Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

19. Trespasses

By: Louise Kennedy

4.00

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between … read more

Similar categories in Louise Kennedy's Trespasses book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of The Promise by Damon Galgut

20. The Promise

By: Damon Galgut

3.86

Format: 293 pages, Hardcover

The Promise , winner of the 2021 Booker Prize, charts the crash and burn of a white South African f… read more

Similar categories in Damon Galgut's The Promise book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • historical
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
"A smile quickly cut his face and then healed up."

-Damon Galgut, The Promise

"Give him a taboo and he feels the need to break it."

-Damon Galgut, The Promise

"Children still, on the verge of not being children any more."

-Damon Galgut, The Promise

"Her own voice sounds echoey, as if somebody else is speaking."

-Damon Galgut, The Promise

Cover of China Room by Sunjeev Sahota

21. China Room

By: Sunjeev Sahota

3.78

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

"The follow-up to his Booker Prize-shortlisted The Runaways, Sunjeev Sahota's new novel follows cha… read more

Similar categories in Sunjeev Sahota's China Room book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
"It’s different for women, isn’t it? They have no choice where they go. They grow up in a prison and then get married into one."

-Sunjeev Sahota, China Room

"You know what the best thing is about falling out of love? It sets you free. Because when you’re in love it is everything, it is imprisoning, it is all there is, and you’d do anything, anything to ke…"

-Sunjeev Sahota, China Room

Cover of In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

22. In Ascension

By: Martin MacInnes

3.79

Format: 496 pages, Paperback

An astonishing novel about a young microbiologist investigating an unfathomable deep vent in the oc… read more

Similar categories in Martin MacInnes's In Ascension book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
  • fantasy
  • audiobook
"I questioned what else I had already missed so far, in my own life, simply through the limits of my character."

-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

"Once he had committed to this life, there was no way he could get out of it. He was angry at us, his daughters, because the financial demands of our existence bound him to it."

-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

"I kind of love it. It's so macabre. The reason we haven't seen or heard from anything off-world is that reaching off-world status is a civilisational death knell. Life either gets stuck there or dest…"

-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

"The air was thick with teeming life, just as the oceans and the rivers were. A spoonful of seawater or a pinch of soil between your fingers held billions of living things. We were blind to this out o…"

-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

Cover of Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

23. Enlightenment

By: Sarah Perry

3.70

Format: 384 pages, Hardcover

A dazzling new work of literary fiction from the author of The Essex Serpent, a story of love and a… read more

Similar categories in Sarah Perry's Enlightenment book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • fantasy
  • audiobook
"Thomas [Hart] lived where he'd been born, and where (so he often thought without rancor) he'd very likely die; and if he lived alone he was not lonely, that being a condition not of solitude but of l…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"So I told her this: that it's true I've only rarely been happy, and perhaps more often been sad. But I have been content. I have lived. I have felt everything available to me: I've been faithless, de…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"I wish I could say, James, that we forgave each other in the end. I wish I could say: she put her head on my shoulder and I welcomed it and we laughed and said all was well. But in fact we were quiet…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"...in the ordinary way we love because we're loved, and give more or less what we're given. But to love without return is more strange and more wonderful, and not the humiliating thing I'd once taken…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

Cover of The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers

24. The Perfect Golden Circle

By: Benjamin Myers

3.92

Format: 211 pages, Hardcover

From a British literary sensation, the story of two rural outcasts and the crop circles they create… read more

Similar categories in Benjamin Myers's The Perfect Golden Circle book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Orbital by Samantha Harvey

25. Orbital

By: Samantha Harvey

3.73

Format: 207 pages, Hardcover

A slender novel of epic power, Orbital  deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men … read more

Similar categories in Samantha Harvey's Orbital book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
  • fantasy
  • audiobook
"Maybe we're the new dinosaurs and need to watch out."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"The past comes, the future, the past, the future. It's always now, it's never now."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"Raw space is a panther, feral and primal; they dream it stalking through their quarters."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"That's all this great human endeavor of space exploration really is, he thinks, an animal migration, a bid for survival. A looping song sent into the open, a territorial animal song."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

Cover of The Trees by Percival Everett

26. The Trees

By: Percival Everett

4.06

Format: 309 pages, Paperback

When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive in Money, Mississippi… read more

Similar categories in Percival Everett's The Trees book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
"Unknown Male is a name,"

-Percival Everett, The Trees

"Goddamnit, I hate murder more than just about anything,"

-Percival Everett, The Trees

"You should know I consider police shootings to be lynchings"

-Percival Everett, The Trees

"People should know, understand that not all Thursdays are the same."

-Percival Everett, The Trees

Cover of An Island by Karen Jennings

27. An Island

By: Karen Jennings

3.56

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE - A "powerful" (The Guardian) novel about a lighthouse keeper with … read more

Similar categories in Karen Jennings's An Island book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
Cover of Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

28. Light Perpetual

By: Francis Spufford

3.68

Format: 336 pages, Paperback

From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, an “extraordinary…symphonic…… read more

Similar categories in Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • war
  • world war ii
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • fantasy
  • audiobook
Cover of The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed

29. The Fortune Men

By: Nadifa Mohamed

3.80

Format: 315 pages, Hardcover

Based on a true event, this novel is “a blues song cut straight from the heart ... about the unjust… read more

Similar categories in Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain by Damian Le Bas

30. The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain

By: Damian Le Bas

3.87

Format: 225 pages, Kindle Edition

Damian Le Bas grew up surrounded by Gypsy history. His great-grandmother would tell him stories of … read more

Similar categories in Damian Le Bas's The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • audiobook
  • historical
  • british literature
Cover of The Grand Illusion by Syd Moore

31. The Grand Illusion

By: Syd Moore

3.40

Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

Historical fiction inspired by the War Office response to the Nazi obsession with the occult Step … read more

Similar categories in Syd Moore's The Grand Illusion book and Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction

30 must-read fiction books like Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Transform Your Habits

Quartet in Autumn

Barbara Pym

3.90

Transform Your Habits

Small Things Like These

Claire Keegan

4.18

Transform Your Habits

Prophet Song

Paul Lynch

4.10

Transform Your Habits

Caledonian Road

Andrew O'Hagan

3.96

View all the books

20 Best fiction books like Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

Transform Your Habits

Trust

Hernan Diaz

3.83

Transform Your Habits

Old God's Time

Sebastian Barry

3.85

Transform Your Habits

Homecoming

Kate Morton

4.07

Transform Your Habits

Tom Lake

Ann Patchett

3.99

View all the books

Never miss a story from us, get weekly updates in your inbox.