Fictional Lives During World War II: A List

Poppies, France - pastel on Canson Mi-Teintes paper - by Lindy Pratch

In honour of Remembrance Day, I put together a list of 10 novels set during World War II. War is an extraordinary, heartbreaking, exciting and horrible circumstance that tests our humanity. I love books that focus on character and setting, so that's what you'll find here. (The links will take you to longer, earlier reviews on my blog.)

Freddy's War by Judy Schultz
War's effects on soldiers as well as those on the home front are examined in this layered novel about a young man from Edmonton who is sent with the Winnipeg Grenadiers to Hong Kong in 1941. Lots of food writing in this one!

Tamar by Mal Peet
After her grandfather's suicide, a British teenager uncovers his secret involvement in a romantic triangle in wartime Netherlands. A nuanced look at the way war affects subsequent generations.

The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit
Poetically narrated in the collective voice of hundreds of women, who arrive perplexed in 1943 at a site in New Mexico where their husbands are working on a top-secret project.

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
This powerful novel threads together the lives of two families through five decades of world events, starting in 1945 when the atomic flash in Nagasaki permanently marked the pattern of a woman's kimono onto her back.

Half-blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Cranky Sid Griffiths, 82 years old in 1992, relates the events surrounding his time in a jazz band in the 1930s in Berlin, and the disappearance of his youngest bandmate, who was picked up by Nazi soldiers in Paris.

Once by Morris Gleitzman
A heart-wrenching tale for all ages about a Jewish child, left in a Catholic orphanage, who decides to search through Nazi-occupied Poland for his parents. See also the companion book, Then.

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
A lyrical, layered novel that begins with a small Polish boy, his family's only survivor, who is rescued from the Nazis by a Greek geologist. The pair eventually make their home in Canada.

Coventry by Helen Humphreys
Through the dramatic events on the night of November 14, 1940, two fire wardens on the roof of Coventry's cathedral become unlikely friends as they share the horrors of an extended bombing raid that destroys much of the city.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Friendship inspires extreme heroism when a young British pilot is captured by Germans in 1943 and made to write down the details of her mission. Very suspenseful!

B for Buster by Iain Lawrence
16-year-old Kak's idealism gradually turns to horror when he lies about his age in 1943 to enlist in the Canadian Air Force and becomes a wireless operator on night bombing raids over Germany.