modern fiction

Today's invented narratives

Modern fiction is literature—novels and short stories—written roughly from the late 19th century onward, though the boundaries shift depending on who's drawing them.

The term often emphasizes departures from traditional storytelling: fragmented narratives, psychological depth, unreliable narrators, stream of consciousness.

She studied modern fiction from Woolf to Morrison.

In bookstores and libraries, modern fiction simply means contemporary novels as opposed to classics.

Opposites
temporal period

modern fictionancient literature

Texts from early civilizations

classical literature · medieval literature · Victorian fiction · Renaissance literature · ancient myths

truth status

modern fictionnonfiction

Literature about real events

journalism · reportage · documentary · biography · history

literary form

modern fictionmodern poetry

Recent literary verse forms

modern drama · experimental poetry · lyric poetry · essay · free verse

Family

modern, fiction, modernity, modernism, modernist, modernize, modernized, modernizing, modernization

Familiarity
Top 100,000
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Known to kids · Used worldwide · Timeless · Everyday, not technical · Rated G