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Historical fiction is a genre that sits at the intersection of art and responsibility. By blending fact with imagination, authors bring the past to life for readers who may rely on fictional accounts as much as history books for their understanding of the past. This creative license carries an ethical duty: The way groups of people, cultures, and histories are depicted can either deepen empathy or perpetuate stereotypes. As I approached writing my new novel, Tamanrasset: Crossroads of the Nomad, a novel about northern Africa and a time period fraught with colonialism and anti-Muslim bias, I felt the need to actively combat and counteract such problematic elements, even though they were commonplace in traditional adventure fiction such as the French Foreign Legion stories I was trying to reinvent. That meant that I needed to do my research, approach the past with open eyes, and be historically accurate. But let’s be honest: As a mature white guy in the good old U.S. of A., what I wanted to write and what I could write could easily be wrong or misinterpreted. Even honest mistakes could deep-six my novel and open me justifiably to criticism. So, yeah, I hired a sensitivity reader.
A sensitivity reader is someone with lived experience or deep cultural knowledge who can review a manuscript for potentially inaccurate, reductive, or harmful portrayals. Their role is not censorship but guidance—pointing out moments where a character’s speech, an author’s description, or a scene’s implications might reinforce biases or distort historical realities. For the historical fiction writer, whose work often crosses cultural, linguistic, and racial boundaries, sensitivity readers can act as invaluable allies.
I think a sensitivity reader serves three essential roles: First, he or she helps ensure accuracy of cultural representation. Second, sensitivity readers highlight the ethics of power and perspective. Sensitivity readers can suggest ways to restore balance to a story by noting where perspectives are missing, by challenging assumptions and by prompting an author to broaden the scope of representation to avoid one-sided storytelling. And, third, sensitivity readers provide insight into language and anachronism. Authors face a tension: how to capture the prejudices of a historical period without normalizing them for modern audiences. A sensitivity reader can help weigh whether certain provocative racial or gendered language serves a legitimate historical purpose or whether it crosses into gratuitous harm.
Critics sometimes argue that sensitivity readers compromise artistic freedom, yet in practice, the role of a reader is collaborative, not restrictive. Just as a fact-checker improves accuracy, or an editor improves clarity, a sensitivity reader improves ethical and cultural depth. Ultimately, the novelist remains free to decide what to revise. The difference is that decisions are informed rather than blind.
In my particular case, I decided to hire a practicing Muslim who is an English language educator to review my book and give me her feedback. There were things I hadn’t seen or intended that were pointed out to me, but I had done a much better job writing than I had feared. I incorporated every single change that was suggested to me. Does that make me immune to criticism? Certainly not. But I feel that, at least on a very basic level, I have tried to write a story that is balanced, sensitive, respectful, and accurate, and I greatly appreciate the assistance I had with that.
TAMANRASSET is historical fiction set on the edge of the Sahara as the ancient world begins to fade and great empires collide. Four strangers—a mature Foreign Legionnaire, a Sharif’s wrathful son, an ambitious American archaeologist, and an abandoned Swedish widow—become adrift and isolated, but when their paths intersect, the fragile connections between them tell a story of survival and fate on the edge of the abyss. Blending the sweep of classic adventure with the horror of a great historical calamities, Edward Parr’s TAMANRASSET is a saga about the crossroads where nomads meet.
Read an Excerpt
The Basilica of Douïmès was quite a lovely site (and fairly peaceful considering the dozen native workmen who were lazily taking measurements and digging pilot holes at Ren’s direction) yet it was not a place for great discoveries. Ren thought about the Byzantine necropolis behind the basilica which seemed such a promising site; unfortunately, Père Delattre had reserved it for his own excavations. Ren wondered how much it would cost to drain the flooded marsh in the Salammbô district nearby where the Temple of Tanit was rumored to be located. As he walked about and reviewed the work of the diggers, Ren became increasingly irritated. Ordinarily, he thought, the Tunisian diggers preferred to do anything but work–they showed a greater interest than the professors in the minutest fragment of pottery and would stand around listening in awe to an academic discussion of a thing they’d never heard of before. Their picks moved with a balletic slowness of motion intended to keep even the most delicate relic safe from harm. Ren had to remind himself again that he was lucky to have earned this position: He had no surviving family, his father had been no one of importance, he had been raised on money left for him in trust. He was lucky to have ended up in England after being orphaned, lucky to have worked with Petrie in Egypt, and lucky to be in Carthage. Nevertheless, he chafed at Delattre’s pedantry and the slow pace of the work.
© 2025 by Edward Parr and Edwardian Press (New Orleans, Louisiana)
About the Author
Edward (“Ted”) Parr studied playwriting at New York University in the 1980’s, worked with artists Robert Wilson, Anne Bogart, and the Bread and Puppet Theater, and staged his own plays Off-Off-Broadway, including Trask, Mythographia, Jason and Medea, Rising and an original translation of Oedipus Rex before pursuing a lengthy career in the law and public service. He published his Kingdoms Fall trilogy of World War One espionage adventure novels which were collectively awarded Best First Novel and Best Historical Fiction Novel by Literary Classics in 2016. He has always had a strong interest in expanding narrative forms, and in his novel writing, he explores older genres of fiction (like the pulp fiction French Foreign Legion adventures or early espionage fiction) as inspiration to examine historical periods of transformation. His main writing inspirations are Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bernard Cornwell, Georges Surdez, and Patrick O’Brien. Website: https://edwardparrbooks.com/
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