What is the difference between literary fiction and genre fiction?
Genre fiction is written within an established category such as crime, romance, fantasy or science fiction, and usually puts plot and the pleasures of that genre first. Literary fiction is the label for novels valued mainly for their style, character and ideas, and it has no agreed definition. The line blurs constantly, so treat the labels as shelf signs, not as a measure of quality.
Zestasy Wiki: our reference answers. Checked for facts and sources; less curated than the magazine.
Walk into a big bookshop and the difference looks obvious. Fiction is on one wall, and crime, romance, fantasy and science fiction each have their own shelves, often their own covers and fonts. Look more closely at the books themselves and it gets much harder to say where one ends and the other begins.
What genre fiction means
Genre fiction, sometimes called commercial or formula fiction, is written to fit an established category so that it appeals to readers who already love that category, as Wikipedia defines it. The main families are familiar:
- Crime: a crime, its detection and the people behind it, driven by suspense and mystery.
- Romance: a relationship between two people, with an optimistic ending.
- Fantasy: magic or the supernatural at the centre, often in invented worlds.
- Science fiction: speculative ideas such as advanced technology, space travel or alien life.
- Horror: stories designed to frighten or unsettle.
Each comes with expectations. A crime novel will be solved; a romance will end hopefully. Readers choose them partly for that promise, and good genre writers play with the rules while keeping it.
What literary fiction means
Literary fiction is harder to pin down, and even its defenders admit it lacks a widely agreed definition, according to Wikipedia's overview. It is often described as character-driven rather than plot-driven, concerned with the human condition, and allowed to take its time. In practice the label often means "a novel that does not belong on one of the genre shelves" and that critics treat as serious art.
That is a definition by exclusion, which is a clue to how shaky it is.
Where it blurs
Very quickly. The same overview points out that major literary figures have written science fiction, crime and romance: Jane Austen is a romance writer by any plot summary, and Margaret Atwood writes speculative fiction. Wikipedia's genre fiction article adds more crossings: Stephen King received a National Book Foundation medal for distinguished contribution to American letters in 2003, which set off a debate, and the Nobel laureate Doris Lessing wrote a five-novel science fiction sequence.
Three books on our own shelves show how slippery the labels are:
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie (1926). Pure genre: a Hercule Poirot mystery. Yet its famous twist, which involves the narrator, changed the detective novel, and in 2013 the Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever, per Wikipedia. That is a formal experiment many literary novelists would envy.
- Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (1938). A gothic novel with a romance at its heart that few readers would dismiss as mere genre.
- The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989). The definition of literary fiction, winner of the Booker Prize, and also, structurally, a road novel about a butler driving to Cornwall to see an old colleague, as Wikipedia describes.
Why it matters less than people think
The labels are useful for one thing: helping you find more of what you already like. As judgements of quality, they are weak. There is clumsy literary fiction and superbly written crime, and both kinds of novel can be moving, clever and memorable.
Our advice: use the labels to navigate, then ignore them. If you only read one side of the shop, try a book from the other for a month. Crime readers often love literary novels with a mystery at their centre; literary readers are regularly surprised by how much craft goes into a good thriller. Our page on choosing what to read next has more on reading against your habits.
FAQ
Is literary fiction harder to read?
Sometimes, but not by definition. Some literary novels are slow or experimental; many are as easy to read as any thriller. Pace and difficulty vary within both categories.
Where does magical realism fit?
Somewhere in between, which is part of its appeal. It uses fantastical elements but is usually shelved as literary fiction. See what magical realism is.
Do prizes only go to literary fiction?
Each prize sets its own rules, and the shortlists are worth browsing whichever side of the shop you prefer. See how one of the biggest works on our page about the Booker Prize.
Can a novel be both?
Constantly. A detective story can be beautifully written and a literary novel can turn on a mystery. When a book seems to be both, that is usually a sign it is worth reading.
Sources
Written by the Zestasy editors. General information for curious adults, not medical, nutrition or training advice.