From my humble point of view, I think it is a half-truth, the result of more than 40 years of reading books.

I do not deny that the context in time makes it more difficult to describe a literary work. For example, when Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov, it would have been quite simple to set the scene. Or when Victor Hugo wrote Les Misérables or Notre Dame de Paris, a little further back in time.

However, there are true masterpieces of literature that present, to put it in a modern term, a certain "dystopian" relationship with reality.

George Orwell wrote 1984, for example, half a century earlier and no one can deny the scope of the work. Of course, a good dose of fantasy is necessary. Not to mention Jules Verne with his 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in his time, people sailed by sail). Or Richard Matheson's novels, many of which were adapted to film.

On the other hand, I have read almost all the works of Christian Jacq, the famous French Egyptologist, and they are so well set that the story of Ramses would seem to be contemporary. If it were not for the fact that he lived 5,000 years before Christ. And I will not stop to mention the countless works dedicated to the Templars.

To conclude: I believe that to write a literary work deeply influenced by the contemporary cultural context in which it was created, less fantasy and study is needed than for the cases cited above. But everything is debatable.

Nice initiative, greetings.