I'm reading Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, and thinking a lot about Middlemarch + Tolstoy's War & Peace and Anna Karenina, all of which I've read and loved. With ambitious vision and grand scope, delving into the particulars of character but also the wider realm of society and history, they are the peak of realist fiction for me.
I'm curious if there are contemporary (let's say 2nd half of 20th century onward) examples of this sort of novel. Typically when I think of grand novels in this vein, I think of the postmoderns, but they're clearly less interested in character and society and capturing that essence of life in writing that Tolstoy in particular was an expert in.
The best comparison I can think of are Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels: detailed, rich, and highly compelling. Another might be Pachinko–I remember Lee mentioning Eliot as an influence–but there was something about the multi-generational frame of that book that didn't work so well for me. Franzen mixes the postmodernism with realism and is admirable, but I've read most of his novels already.
Curious for other suggestions in this vein!
by lockettbloom