Some novels, in addition to the high literary quality which made them famous, give an accurate idea of their historical context. Here are a few examples :

•  14th century
  • Les Rois Maudits (Maurice DRUON) : the disastrous period before the Hundred-Year war ; a remarkable saga
• 15th century
  • Notre-Dame de Paris (Victor HUGO) : the story of the hunchback of Notre-Dame in the days of King Louis XI
• 16th century
  • L'oeuvre au noir (Marguerite YOURCENAR) : the life of an alchimist in the Renaissance
  • La Reine Margot (Alexandre DUMAS) : murders at the court
• 17th century
  • Les trois mousquetaires (Alexandre DUMAS) : Paris and the court at the time of the regency of Cardinal Richelieu
  • L'allée du roi (Françoise CHANDERNAGOR) : life at the court of the Sun King
• 18th century
  • Les chouans (Honoré de BALZAC) : the counter-revolutionary upheaval and the cruel repression which destroyed the Vendée region in 1793-95

• 19th century
  • La chartreuse de Parme (STENDHAL) the battle of Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon
  • Les chevaux du soleil (Jules ROY) : the story of the colonization of Algeria 1830-1962
• 20th century
  • Les Thibaults (Roger MARTIN du GARD) : the story of a family at the begining of 20th c. ; one of the best description of the efforts of the Socialists to avoid the break out of WW1
  • Les croix de bois (Roland DORGELES) or Le feu (Henri BARBUSSE) : the horror of WW1
  • Les grandes familles (Maurice DRUON) : the upper class and the banking world in the 1920s
  • Week-end à Zuydcoote (Robert MERLE) : the defeat of the French army in 1940
  • Au Bon Beurre (Jean DUTOURD) : the story of a profiteer grocer in Paris under German occupation
  • Les chemins de la liberté (Jean Paul SARTRE) : after WW2, the intellectuals and political commitment

See also a list of American movies and French movies on episode of French history.

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