You’ve likely heard of the literary genres autobiography and the semi-autobiographical novel, in which an author either recites their life story or inserts parts of themselves and their life into a work of fiction. In film, an increasingly popular genre is the biopic, a big-screen account of a public figure’s life. Also popular are the “based on a true story” films, which range from any number of genres. But while such a genre does exist in fiction, called biofiction, the moral and artistic ethics surrounding its execution are often called into question.

What is biofiction, exactly? Well, it’s shortened from biographical fiction, which, in short, means works of fiction that draw from biographical fact. This concept can work wonderfully in film, in which Hollywood can get away with taking any number of creative liberties in relaying the real-life story of a celebrity—or anyone with a story that will sell, really. But in order to make that very story sell, the writers and producers of a movie will often need to bend the truth to fit a certain artistic vision. Of course, skewing history can be messy, no matter what medium you’re dealing with. But when it comes to literary fiction, readers and critics can often hold authors to a higher standard than filmmakers, in my opinion.

It’s just as easy to write a novel about a celebrity as it is to make a film about them, in the sense that there are always going to be public figures who will resonate in the public eye and culture. Take Marilyn Monroe, for example, whose life has been so intricately picked apart by biographers to the present day that it almost feels disrespectful to keep on digging up a woman who deserves nothing more than peace.

Writing a work of non-fiction about Monroe is one thing. But when Joyce Carol Oates wrote and published Blonde in 2000, her novel of biographical fiction in which she took it upon herself to imagine Monroe’s life and innermost thoughts, it felt like crossing a line. Especially when the novel was adapted into a feature film by Netflix over two decades later. It was the first film on the streaming service to receive an NC-17 rating. Why? Because of a particular scene in the film drawn from the novel, in which Monroe is brutally raped. While no one can say definitely that the star was never sexually violated in her lifetime, the fictionalization of such an event reads as violating in a different sense.

“Admiring Marilyn feels less trivial than the adulation of any ordinary pin-up because the love – or the lust – is mixed with pity. And the moral high ground of compassion makes us feel special, more sensitive, nicer,” wrote Cressida Connolly in her review of Blonde for The Guardian in April 2000. “It also bestows a license to snoop, allowing us to inquire into the most private reaches of her life without charges of prurience.” She referred to the novel as a “shabby piece of work” and remarked that its problems stem from the form of the book. “Fictionalizing a life is a dodgy business, because the only thing which separates it from biography is conjecture, and, by extension, untruth. When the facts of the subject’s life are as copiously recorded as Marilyn’s, only the wildest invention can heave such an enterprise into fiction.”

It is a truth now universally acknowledged that historical fiction is having a bit of a moment, especially in the domain of the type of books that are often referred to as literary fiction. I have always been a sucker for narratives set in the past and have thought long and hard about what makes them so appealing, especially in times when the world around you seems to be going up in flames. I have not been very good at reading books fresh off the press, though — I am usually drowning in my TBR pile full of backlist titles.

To shake things up a little, one of my reading goals last year had been to read at least some books published in 2023. I managed to read quite a few – owing in no small part to the amazing historical fiction that has been published this year. From new novels from heavyweights like Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith to some unbelievably inspiring debut novels, there was such a wide variety of stories to choose from. Here is some of the best historical fiction published in 2023 to whisk you off to different times and places and offer fresh perspectives on the present.

February 12, 2023 – January 21, 2024

November 17, 2023 – January 20, 2024

Every December day that I’m in Maine I swim in the ocean and my husband tells me I’m insane. The temperature keeps dropping. I get two respiratory infections, a twenty-four-hour stomach thing. Why? he says to me. Mom, the children say. They have only recently transitioned me to Mom from Mommy, and every time they say it my breath catches. Their dad’s Cuban and I’ve tried to convince them to transition me to Mami. It’s Spanish! I say. You’re white, Mom, they say. You know, Mom, our younger kid says, beating yourself up isn’t a hobby. I’m preparing, I tell them. For what? they say. For January.

The first January we live in Maine, the twenty-second month of the pandemic: we’re all so tired and almost everyone I know in New York is sick. My job has gone remote and I get up each morning to work when it’s still dark. I turn on the small space heater in my office and wrap a big blanket around myself, sit with my computer on my lap. Evening comes, and I text my friend five minutes before I teach at seven. I’ve been at my desk for fourteen hours but can’t think of a single thing I’ve done. What if I hate teaching now? I say. Babe, my friend texts back, it’s January. You hate everything.

The Januarys in high school are all track—all the early Januarys are in Florida and the monotony of those sunny, plastic, clear and cloudless days comes to feel like it’s assaulting me. I run four events at least. The two-mile is the longest, and the last race of the day. Late nights on the bus, the too-big jacket and sweatpants, crumbled rubber on bare thighs while I sit and stretch with my Discman, bile in my throat at the start; everybody cheers when I win, no one after talks to me.

The first January in New York, alone, on Tenth Street between C and D, I’m twenty-one. I call in sick to work. I tell them I got food poisoning because I’ve worked nonstop for months and I can’t fathom smiling another minute, another day, at some klatch of too-thin women who order just one order of our extra-special-everybody-loves-it chocolate-bag dessert with extra spoons, whipped cream on the side; at some guy, with his hand on the low curve of my back, who keeps sending back his steak. I count the cash stuffed in the dark wood box I keep by my bed and then I call again and tell them I threw up so much I ruptured my esophagus and now I have to go to the hospital. I think about how easy lying is. I read books all day, watch TV all night, hardly eat because I can’t afford to eat. The restaurant is uptown and I live downtown and I walk around the whole time assuming that I won’t get caught and I don’t. Oh God, they all say when I come back to work, their eyes scanning my face, you must have been so sick.