''Washington, D.C.'' is a 1967 novel by Gore Vidal. The sixth novel in his ''

Narratives of Empire The ''Narratives of Empire'' series is a heptalogy of historical novels by Gore Vidal, published between 1967 and 2000, which chronicle the dawn-to-decadence history of the "American Empire American imperialism refers to the expansion of Am ...

'' series of

historical novel Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...

s (although the first one published), it begins in 1937 and continues into the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

, tracing the families of Senator James Burden Day and influential newspaper publisher Blaise Sanford. This book is the least historical and most novelistic of any of the seven books. The seventh book in the series, ''The Golden Age'', takes place during nearly the same span of years with many of the same characters, and needed to be written around the events of ''Washington, D.C.'' The novel is written in the

third person Third person, or third-person, may refer to: * Third person (grammar), a point of view (in English, ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', and ''they'') ** Illeism, the act of referring to oneself in the third person * Third-person narrative, a perspective in p ...

and is inspired by the novels of Henry James.

References

Novels set in the 1930s Novels set during the Cold War Novels by Gore Vidal Little, Brown and Company books American historical novels Third-person narrative novels Novels set in Washington, D.C. {{ColdWar-novel-stub