Family saga

The family saga is a genre of literature which chronicles the lives and doings of a family or a number of related or interconnected families over a period of time. In novels (or sometimes sequences 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 word saga comes from Old Norse, where it meant 'what is said, utterance, oral account, notification' and '(structured) narrative, story (about somebody)',[1] and was originally borrowed into English from Old Norse by scholars in the eighteenth century to refer to the Old Norse prose narratives known as sagas.[2][3]

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 the AGA saga.

Successful writers of popular family sagas include Susan Howatch, R. F. Delderfield and Philippa Carr.

Literature

• The Sagas of Icelanders - the medieval Icelandic family sagas whence the word 'saga' is derived;
• Dream of the Red Chamber - one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature, it chronicles the rise and decline of the Jia family;
• Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset;
• Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh;
• Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann;
• The Covenant, by James A. Michener;
• Dune, by Frank Herbert;
• The Tower and the Hive series by Anne McCaffrey, set in the universe of the "Pegasus" trilogy;
• the Shannara cycle, by Terry Brooks;
• A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, by Henry Williamson;
• The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy;
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende;
• The Jalna books, by Mazo de la Roche;
• The Kent Family Chronicles and The Crown Family Saga, by John Jakes;
• Strangers and Brothers, by C. P. Snow;
• The Immigrants, by Howard Fast;
• The Mallens, by Catherine Cookson;
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Silmarillion, by J. R. R. Tolkien;
• Time and the Wind, by Erico Verissimo
• The Palaeologian Dynasty. The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, by George Leonardos;
• Radetzkymarsch (Radetzky March), by Joseph Roth;
• Roots, by Alex Haley;
• Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi;
• The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough;
• Holes, a novel by Louis Sachar;
• The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolò, Renaissance-set novel series by Dorothy Dunnett;
• Fall on Your Knees, by Ann-Marie MacDonald;
• Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides;
• White Teeth, by Zadie Smith;
• The Witcher, by Andrzej Sapkowski;
• Captains and the Kings, by Taylor Cadwell;
• Evergreen, by Belva Plain;
• The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold;
• The Emberverse series, by S. M. Stirling
• Roma, by Steven Saylor
• Fire & Blood by George R. R. Martin

Film and television

• American Pop
• The Best of Youth, in Italian La Meglio Gioventù
• Blackadder
• The Godfather
• Heimat
• Household Saints
• How the West Was Won
• I, Claudius
• In a Land of Plenty
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
• Our Friends in the North
• Roots
• Roots: The Next Generations
• Star Wars
• Sunshine
• Taken
• The Thorn Birds
• The Dirtwater Dynasty
• This Is Us
• Vacas

References

1. Dictionary of Old Norse Prose/Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog (Copenhagen: [Arnamagnæan Commission/Arnamagnæanske kommission], 1983–), s.v. '1 saga sb. f.'.
2. "saw, n.2.", OED Online, 1st edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2019).
3. "saga, n.1.", OED Online, 1st edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2019).