A saga novel is a genre encompassing the wide scopes of stories and narratives such as religious saga, national saga, family saga, human saga, etc.

History

Icelandic Tradition

The saga novel as a genre originates from the Icelandic history of family sagas[1]

Examples

A major example of a saga novel in English literature is George Eliot's Middlemarch. In Russia, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace is a representative saga novel. In Korea, Kyunglee Park's Lands (Tohgee) is another example. In the United States, Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind belong to the category of saga novels. In China, Lo Guanzhong (Lo Kuanchung)'s Sanguo zhi yanyi (Sankuo chi yen-i; Romance of the Three Kingdoms) is the most representative and well-known saga novel since the 14th century.

Examples of Saga Novels
Title Author Year Culture/Nation/Category
Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 Germany
East of Eden   John Steinbeck 1952 US
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombia
The Patternist Series Octavia E. Butler 1976 US
Roots Alex Haley 1976 US
Chesapeake   James A. Michener 1978 US
The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende 1982 Chile
The Inheritance Trilogy N. K. Jemisin 2010 US
Barkskins Annie Proulx 2016 Canada/US
Homegoing Yaa Gyasi 2016 Ghana/US
Pachinko Min Jin Lee 2017 Korea/Japan
A Woman is No Man Etaf Rum 2019 Arab/US
The Old Drift Namwali Serpell 2019 Zambia
The Yellow House Sarah M Broom 2019 New Orleans

References

  1. ↑ Lönnroth, Lars (1975). "The Concept of Genre in Saga Literature". Scandinavian Studies. 47 (4): 419–426. ISSN 0036-5637. JSTOR 40917549.


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