Amor Towles: Historical Fiction Needs Backdrop, Not Hyper-Realism

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Image by Public Co from Pixabay

In an interview with Lit Hub, writer Amor Towles discusses his process for creating realistic historical settings in his novels.

Towles approaches his settings as though setting a stage for a play. A painted backdrop gives the audience a sense of place, but generally isn’t too detailed. “If you look at the style of painting on that canvas, it’s not hyper-realism because that would look very weird to the eye if you were sitting in the theater,” Towles says. “For me, history is the painted backdrop. I really don’t care that it be very precise. It should not be very precise. It’s not hyper-realism. It should be impressionist.”