During the last twenty years many English and American novelists have tried their hands at novels that deal with the past. This book examines two contemporary novels which both reconstruct recent history. It tries to explain the writers' interest in the process of history-making and it raises the question whether it still makes sense to speak of «historical novels». Finally, in a more general part, the author looks at the theoretical background and discusses the relationship between history and fiction both in historiography and in the contemporary novel.