Family saga

See also:Category:Family saga novels

Thefamily sagais a genre ofliteraturewhich chronicles the lives and doings of a family or a number of related or interconnected families over a period of time. In novels (or sometimessequences of novels) with a serious intent, this is often a thematic device used to portray particular historical events, changes of social circumstances, or the ebb and flow of fortunes from a multitude of perspectives.

The wordsagacomes fromOld Norse,where it meant "what is said, utterance, oral account, notification" and "(structured) narrative, story (about somebody)",and was originally borrowed into English from Old Norse by scholars in the eighteenth century to refer to the Old Norse prose narratives known assagas.

The typical family saga follows generations of a family through a period of history in a series of novels. A number of subgenres of the form exist such as theAGA saga.

Successful writers of popular family sagas includeSusan Howatch,R. F. DelderfieldandPhilippa Carr.

Literature

• Thesagas of Icelanders– the medieval Icelandic family sagas in which the word "saga"is derived
• Mahabharata,byVyasa– the chronicle of theChandravanshiRajputclan founded byPuru,also considered the longest poem in human history
• Dream of the Red Chamber– one of theFour Great Classical NovelsofChinese literature,it chronicles the rise and decline of the Jia family
• A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight,byHenry Williamson
• Ada or Ardor,byVladimir Nabokov
• Absalom, Absalom!,byWilliam Faulkner
• The Artamonov Business,byMaxim Gorky
• Brideshead Revisited,byEvelyn Waugh
• Beauty Is a Wound,byEka Kurniawan
• Buddenbrooks,byThomas Mann
• Captains and the Kings,byTaylor Caldwell
• Harmonia Caelestis, ahistoricistpiece byPéter Esterházy
• TheCairo Trilogy,byNaguib Mahfouz
• TheCazalet Chronicles,byElizabeth Jane Howard
• The Covenant,byJames A. Michener
• The Crowthers of Bankdam,byThomas Armstrong
• Dune,byFrank Herbert
• East of Eden,byJohn Steinbeck
• TheEmberverseseries, byS. M. Stirling
• Evergreen,byBelva Plain
• Fall on Your Knees,byAnn-Marie MacDonald
• Family Treetetralogy, byAnn M. Martin
• Fire & BloodbyGeorge R. R. Martin
• The Forsyte Saga,byJohn Galsworthy
• The Golovlyov Family,byMikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
• The Good Earthand its sequels, byPearl S. Buck
• Holes,byLouis Sachar
• Homegoing,byYaa Gyasi
• Homestuck,byAndrew Hussie
• The House of the Spirits,byIsabel Allende
• The Immigrants,byHoward Fast
• TheJalnabooks, byMazo de la Roche
• The Kent Family ChroniclesandThe Crown Family Saga,byJohn Jakes
• Kristin Lavransdatter,bySigrid Undset
• Os Maias,byEça de Queiroz
• Old-fashioned Story byMagda Szabó
• I Malavoglia,byGiovanni Verga
• The Mallens,byCatherine Cookson
• Middlesex,byJeffrey Eugenides
• One Hundred Years of Solitude,byGabriel García Márquez
• The Oppermanns,byLion Feuchtwanger
• The Palaeologian Dynasty. The Rise and Fall of Byzantium,byGeorge Leonardos
• The Promise,byDamon Galgut
• Radetzkymarsch(Radetzky March), byJoseph Roth
• Roma,bySteven Saylor
• Roots,byAlex Haley
• The Silmarillion,byJ. R. R. Tolkien
• Sometimes A Great Notion,byKen Kesey
• Strangers and Brothers,byC. P. Snow
• The Thibaults,byRoger Martin du Gard
• Time and the Wind,byErico Verissimo
• The Thorn Birds,byColleen McCullough
• TheLymond ChroniclesandThe House of Niccolò,Renaissance-set novel series byDorothy Dunnett
• Under the North Star,byVäinö Linna
• The Vorkosigan Saga,byLois McMaster Bujold
• White Teeth,byZadie Smith
• The Witcher,byAndrzej Sapkowski

Film and television

• American Pop
• Arrested Development
• The Best of Youth,in ItalianLa Meglio Gioventù
• Blackadder
• Dark
• Game of Thrones
• The Godfather
• Heimat
• House of the Dragon
• Household Saints
• How the West Was Won
• I, Claudius
• In a Land of Plenty
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Our Friends in the North
• Raajneeti
• Roots
• Roots: The Next Generations
• Sibiriada
• Star Wars
• Succession
• Sunshine
• Taken
• The Thorn Birds
• The Dirtwater Dynasty
• This Is Us
• Vacas

Video games

• What Remains of Edith Finch