Crossing continents and spanning 150 years, this collection of books presents powerful fictional accounts of some of the world’s most dramatic and harrowing true stories
From cruel injustices and cold-blooded murder to heartbreaking disasters at sea, these Booker-nominated novels offer a fresh perspective on a wide range of memorable real-life events.
Introducing readers to human experiences behind the headlines, the authors featured here have all taken inspiration from true stories – while also taking a few creative liberties here and there. As the saying goes, fact is often stranger than fiction, and this rings true with the following list of Booker and International Booker-nominated novels.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, 2025, Jacob Elordi
Amazon MGM Studios/Sony Pictures Television/Alamy Stock PhotoSmall Boat is a fictional account of a true event that took place in November 2021, when an inflatable dinghy carrying 29 people capsized in the English Channel. The people on board were all migrants travelling from France to England; after getting into difficulties at sea, they were wrongly told by the French authorities to seek help from their British counterparts, which led to the deaths of all but two of those on board. Delecroix’s short but powerful account is written primarily from the perspective of the coastguard who took multiple distress calls from the dinghy that fateful night.
Translated from French and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025, this devastating novel asks where the responsibility lies for this preventable disaster, and to what extent all of us are guilty of looking away during a crisis. Paris Match said that ‘the narrator accuses those who judge her of hypocrisy and will only see herself as a cog in the administrative wheel of a France that will not give refuge to the world’s misery. As strong and cruel as the times we live in.’
Keneally’s international bestseller came about after a serendipitous encounter in Beverly Hills in 1980, when he was shopping for luggage. Keneally went into a shop owned by Leopold Pfefferberg, a Polish Holocaust survivor who owed his life to Oskar Schindler – a German businessman whose actions during the Second World War saved approximately 1,200 Polish Jews from certain death by employing them in his enamelware and ammunition factories. Pfefferberg convinced Keneally to write Schindler’s story, using his archival documents and information from other survivors, to create the eventual 1982 Booker Prize winner.
According to Sam Jordison from The Guardian, ‘it’s one thing to sift through historical documents and testimonies. It’s another to bring them to life as he has here. Who cares if it’s faction or fiction? It’s a book everyone should read.’
While more of a sprawling epic than a brief history, James’ 2015 Booker Prize-winning novel was inspired by the attempted assassination of reggae singer Bob Marley. A Brief History of Seven Killings adopts the perspective of a multitude of characters, including CIA operatives, gang leaders, a determined reporter and even a ghost. Shining a spotlight on the violence and corruption that dogged Jamaica in the 1970s and ‘80s, James’s novel provides a brutal examination of a nation in turmoil.
2019 Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo called it a wild and rebellious book, and cautioned readers to ‘read this novel at your peril – buckle up, maybe take a painkiller or two. You have been warned.’
Richard Flanagan drew on his father’s experiences of working on the deadly Burma–Thailand Railway during the Second World War for his 2014 Booker-winning novel. The book explores the life of a fictional doctor, Dorrigo Evans, over several decades as he comes to terms with the big decisions that have shaped his life. Evans is based on Edward “Weary” Dunlop, a highly commended Australian doctor who served in the war, and who negotiated with Japanese officers to gain better conditions for his fellow prisoners of war.
Morag Fraser from the Sydney Morning Herald called the book ‘a huge novel, ambitious, driven, multi-stranded, and unembarrassed by its documentary impulse. It is both record and tribute to the men who lived and died alongside his father, but tribute of the best kind a novelist son could pay – transmuting filial obligation into engrossing narrative.’
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020, The Shadow King focuses on the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, spearheaded by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Mengiste hones in on the women fighting on the frontlines in the war, bringing to the fore an often forgotten perspective, and focusing on two women specifically: Hirut, a courageous, vulnerable maid who becomes a soldier, and Aster, Hirut’s master’s wife, a grief-stricken and often cruel woman who later becomes a skilled commander.
Weaving in information from archival newspaper articles and photos from the war, Mengiste also took inspiration from her great-grandmother, who fought in Emperor Haile Selassie’s army. Publishers Weekly said that, ‘Mengiste again brings heart and authenticity to a slice of Ethiopian history.’
Spanning four generations, this family drama set during the political upheaval of 1970s India was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013. Lahiri was initially inspired by true events that took place in Kolkata, where her grandparents lived. An incident occurred during which two brothers who were involved in the communist Naxalite movement were shot and killed by the paramilitary, as their family were forced to watch.
Lahiri used the incident to create fictional brothers, Subhash and Udayan – born 15 months apart and inseparable. The novel follows them as they grow older and their paths diverge, before tragedy strikes, its effects reverberating around them to affect future generations.
Anita Felicelli from The Los Angeles Review of Books said that the genius in the novel is how ‘it manages to ground the personal within the political, to show how even faraway political events can transform and devastate lives.’
The Fortune Men is based on the grim true story of the murder of Lily Volpert and the hanging of Mahmood Mattan, a former Somali merchant seaman, who was wrongly accused of her murder in Cardiff in 1952. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021, the novel tells the story of a man who believes, until it’s too late, that his innocence will save him (Mattan’s conviction was finally quashed, 45 years later).
With information taken from court records and news accounts, Mohamed focuses on the British criminal justice system and its flawed process in the conviction of Mattan. The Guardian praised Mohamed for her ‘determined, nuanced and compassionate exposure of injustice. Mohamed gives the terrible story of Mattan’s life and death meaning and dignity.’
Contrary to its title, True History of the Kelly Gang is a fictional account of Ned Kelly, the famed Australian bushranger. Based on real characters and incorporating parts of Ned Kelly’s life – while also taking many creative liberties – Carey’s novel is the captivating tale of an outlaw who was considered a national hero. Standing up for the underdog and defying the oppressive and corrupt powers of the time, Kelly robbed banks, stole horses and murdered police officers with the help of his gang of outlaw misfits.
‘True History of the Kelly Gang isn’t merely a historical novel; it’s a fully imagined act of historical impersonation,’ Anthony Quinn from The New York Times said of the 2001 Booker winner.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2018, this gripping crime thriller begins with an 11-year-old boy, Jack, and his two sisters, waiting for their mother in their broken-down car while she goes off to seek help. She never returns, and her children’s lives are turned upside down. Bauer was inspired by the real 1988 case of the unsolved murder of 22-year-old Marie Wilks, who was abducted from the hard shoulder of the M50 motorway and killed in June 1988.
As Bauer told the Booker Prizes, ‘It has haunted me ever since and I always wondered about the aftermath. Of course, my story becomes fiction beyond that point, but the event informs everything else in the book.’
The Booker Prize judges praised Snap for being a ‘stylish, intelligent novel about how we survive trauma.’
Based on a famous series of animal mutilations in the early 20th century, Arthur and George follows the two titular men, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the famed creator of Sherlock Holmes, and George Edalji, an obscure solicitor. After George is convicted of the crimes, Arthur is persuaded to prove George’s innocence and uncover the real culprit.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2005, the novel explores the discrimination and racism people faced in the Victorian period as George’s family is harassed and he is wrongly accused.
The Great Wyrley Outrages took place in 1903 in the county of Staffordshire, as many sheep, horses and cows were attacked. According to Andrew Taylor from The Independent, Barnes ’reminds us that history is inexact, partial and fanciful, that it is concerned with fiction as much as fact.’
Undeniably, one of the most popular portrayals of the sinking of the Titanic is the 1997 film starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Less well known but equally gripping is Bainbridge’s novel Every Man for Himself, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize just one year earlier, in 1996.
Bainbridge’s novel is narrated by a wealthy young orphan, Morgan. Now in his 20s, he’s lived a life of luxury, cared for by the family of famed banker JP Morgan. The novel follows the days leading up to the Titanic sinking, with the inclusion of both fictional and real characters who were onboard, including the architect Thomas Andrews and Captain Edward Smith.
Janet Kaye from The New York Times said, ‘It is difficult to imagine a more engrossing account of the famous shipwreck than this one.’
