Fantasy is a genre of art dealing with magical objects and supernatural occurrences as the main ingredient of theme, plot and setting. Fantasy fictions writers creates an environment through their writing in which the supernatural appears natural and magical happenings a reality. The receivers are expected to suspend their disbelief and accept the impossible as credible.
Fantasy fiction books occupy an enormous space in everybody's childhood. Some of the popular fantasy fiction books that have been a part of every child are fairy tales like Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs and Alice in Wonderland . The popular fantasy fiction books have captured the readers' attention by its fantastical adventures, brave heroes saving beautiful heroines, sinister monsters and magical lands in some mysterious regions.
Themes of Popular Fantasy Fiction Books
- Conflict between good and evil
- Quest theme
- Celebration of a heroic character
- Magic
- Medieval romance or folklore
The fantasy fiction books that have been popular and always enchanting from the old ages to the modern days are the listed below.
- The Odyssey to Beowulf
- The Book of One Thousand and One Nights
- Valmiki's Ramayana
- Veda Vyasa's Mahabharata
- Journey to the West
- Arthurian legend
- Dante's Divine Comedy
- William Morris's The Well at the World's End .
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan
- L.F. Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
- George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin
- Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys
- Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian
- Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories
Fantasy as a genre in its modern form is not more than two centuries old, but it has its roots to long and distinguished history. Epic myths like the Ramayana , the Mahabharata and the Divine Comedy are popular fantasy fiction books . Fantasy fiction books can be enjoined by both children and adults because it caters to our fantasy and imagination. Besides, from Freudian analysis Fantasy fiction books have deeper psychological insights or they can be instrumental in revealing some greater truths in the façade of fantasy as in the genre of magic-realism . Magic realisms like Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude or Rushdie's Midnight's Children are advanced form of fantasy.
Modern fantasy fiction books have been popularized by authors like George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Abraham Merritt, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. These authors recreated the genre of fantasy fiction and led foundation to latest form of fantasy which came to be known as the “ lost world ” sub-genre. The first fantasy fiction magazine has been published in 1923 called Weird Tales, followed The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction . The popularity of fantasy fiction books continued in the 21 st Century evident from the best-selling position of J . K. Rowling's Harry Potter books.
