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The term saga novel appears with Jean-Christophe , the work of Romain Roland, which constitutes the first true saga novel besides.

Commonly, it is about vast a Romance in several volumes (often more than one ten). They form a whole, one indeed finds the same characters from one volume to another, but can nevertheless be read separately. They often constitute the fresco of a middle-class family on a bottom of modern history.

In fact the Années 1930 mark, thereafter, the favor of the saga novel in France, with in particular:

Roger Martin of Gard, Thibault (1922 - 1940)
Jules Romans, the Men of good will (1932 - 1947)
Georges Duhamel, Chronic of Pasquier (1933 - 1945)
Louis Aragon, Cycle of the Real-world (1933-1951)
Jacques Burrs, the sentimental Destinies (1934 - 1936)
Marcel Proust, With the research of time lost (1908 - 1922)

One can see the human Comédie of Balzac or, in a more obvious way, Rougon-Macquart of Zola like precursors of the saga novel. They have the form indeed, but would be rather defined of it as family sagas , proposing only one middle-class point of view of the company, unlike the saga novels of the inter-war period.

Men of good will , of Jules Romans, watch indeed from the completely various points of view, the fact in particular of the Unanimism, movement whose the author asserts himself. This gigantic work (the most important romantic sum of the French literature of the 20th century, with 27 volumes and 779 chapters) puts in scene completely different characters socially. One thus passes from an abbot to a professor, a workman, a deputy, a marquis… and even to large characters of the time, such Clemenceau, Jaurès, Joffre or Briand.

One also finds a diversity from the point of view, certainly less marked but existing all the same, in Thibault of Roger Martin of Gard. Jacques, the brother of Antoine Thibault (the protagonist), has a vision of the company completely opposed to that of his brother and his family, rejecting the middle-class order.

One can think of a similar opposition from the points of view in the Chronicle of Pasquier , where Ferdinand, in professional failure, lives in the street. This novel also shows a rather great diversity of social environments in the easy category (medium of the businesses, the theater, science…).

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