What is a historical novel? One set in the past, presumably?
But when does the present end, and when does the past begin: ten minutes, ten days, a decade, a century, a millennium ago?
Do novels set during an author’s own lifetime have any claim to be historical? I don’t see why not. and are all set during the childhoods and early adulthoods of their central protagonists, who are fictionalised versions of the authors themselves. So, in a sense, they are all historical novels, aren’t they, reaching back into a well-remembered but now-vanished past, recreating
