Zeitroman

Zeitroman, German for novel of the times, is a genre of the novel that attempts to represent its own present era completely and comprehensibly, analyzing contemporary society and prevailing living conditions and their effects on the individual. It functions as a specialized variant of the historical novel, combining realistic depiction of society with an analytic aim, and is marked by socio-political engagement, a cross-sectional technique presenting events simultaneously, and the layering of several time periods within one narrative. The term was coined in 1810 by Clemens Brentano and became a defining novel type across nineteenth-century European literature, with major examples including Gustav Freytag's Soll und Haben, Theodor Fontane's Der Stechlin, and, in the twentieth century, Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg.