Librarian help?

[justalurkr]

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is listed by amazon.com a literary fiction, "family saga." However, what interests me the most about the story is that it's told against the backdrop of half a century of Ethiopian history (according to the blurb.)

Is there a specific genre or search term for "books set amid modern events?"

Comments

[nialla42]

Using the old school method of subject, you can cover specific dates. For example, "World War, 1914-1918" for WWI and "World War, 1939-1945" for WWII. There's also more generic stuff like "United States -- 19th Century."

However, this is what I'm seeing as the subjects for this title:

Physicians -- Fiction.
Brothers -- Fiction.
Twins -- Fiction.
Fathers and sons -- Fiction.
Orphans -- Fiction.
Ethiopia -- Fiction.
Bronx (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction.

Nothing except the blurb indicates time period. Keywords give a better chance of finding what you're looking for, but you have to have an idea what you're looking for. Or ask a librarian or bookseller for help, though most booksellers don't hire as many people who "know" books.

[justalurkr]

😉 and this is why we need to keep our libraries open and funded.

Thanks for the lead!

[nialla42]

Oh, and if you're specifically looking for historical fiction, there's a subject heading for that, but it can cover a wide range of genres. It could be a romance novel or a fictionalized version of true events in a more "literary" style.

[justalurkr]

It looks as though the subject idea is going to get me farther than "historical fiction," both because lots of genres, as you pointed out, as well as an additional tendency for sites like wikipedia to stop listing novels as "historical" around 1950, the "modern historical novel" apparently being some kind of oxymoron.