Realist and Literary Fiction

The novel and its coming-of-age variant, the bildungsroman, when the work's defining interest is character and society rather than a genre premise such as crime, the fantastic or history. Belongs here: the mainstream literary novel across every national tradition, and the classic bildungsroman. Does not belong here: a novel whose organizing premise is a historical setting, a speculative one or a detective plot, each placed under its own genre group below instead.