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Explanation and Analysis:
Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale is a historical fiction novel set in France during the second World War. Hannah utilizes real-world historical context (for example, Hitler's invasion of France in 1940) as a backdrop for her narrative, which itself is fictional. Characters, plot points, and even the French town in which the main characters live are imagined, but Hannah draws from the non-fictional timeline of World War II to craft a harrowing and believable war story. With its fictional narrative set against a historical backdrop, Hannah has the freedom to play with her characters and create a cohesive tale of struggle, resistance, and love.
Beyond its overall genre of historical fiction, The Nightingale is often categorized as both a war and love story. The narrative focuses on two sisters, Isabelle and Vianne, as they navigate their lives in France throughout the Nazi invasion of Europe in the 1940s. Amidst their struggle to survive—as a French resistance spy and a head of household, respectively—both sisters encounter love and loss as their homeland falls apart around them. Additionally, The Nightingale is a commentary on the price of war for those off the battlefield, specifically women—a lesser-explored point of view amongst war novels in general.
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