"Fantasy" Genre Outside of Europe?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

This isn't a well-trafficked sub-board, so I'll try not to waste too much effort on a yuge post few will read:

For audiences, at least in America, a lot of the "fantasy" genre takes place in different versions of an fictional Europe. This is for the obvious reasons that (1) our fairy tales have distinctly medieval tones and are related to European folklore; and (2) Tolkein and, more recently, George R. R. Martin set their fantasy worlds in a context to be roughly allegorical to Europe.

The popularity of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" had me wondering about the possibilities of fantasy locations outside of Europe and the broader "Eurosphere" (Tolkein, Martin, and Lewis all had various versions of "the Middle East" in their works, though these were often set in juxtaposition to fantasy-Europe and not as locations in their own right). "Avatar" seems to be pretty easy enough to classify loosely as fantasy--supernatural elements, imaginary and mythical creatures, setting in a distant, hypothetical past with allegorical elements--so I don't feel the need to dispute that. "Avatar" also contains nations that are roughly (if not overtly, in-your-face) allegorical to real world nations--mainland China, Imperial Japan, Tibet, and the Inuit. There are also references to India in the form of Guru Pathik.

It seems that East Asian fantasy traffics relatively well with American audiences, if only in distinct sub-cultures. There is obviously anime, some of which draws on Japanese folklore and history (presumably). Alongside that there is the popularity of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", a Chinese epic. This is probably to some extent because our pop culture sort of romanticizes or mysticizes certain distinct civilizations. But what about other locations? I can imagine a few distinct alternatives: Middle East & North Africa (as itself and not an alien location); Sub-Saharan Africa; Native Americans throughout the Western hemisphere; South/Southeast Asia; European America. There are some of these I would have a hard time imagining American audiences picking up. But I think it's not that hard to weave something out of the myriad pre-European civilizations in both North and South America. I mention "European America" as its own thing simply because the idea of allegorical-Europeans on an alien continent as its own story is probably not done at all (though maybe "Dune"--not strictly fantasy in the traditional sense but definitely "fantasy in space"--shows that possibility, albeit in a more Middle Eastern context).

Do any of y'all have input or views, or examples of other non-European fantasy?

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

For some reason, most fantasy employing Western Hemisphere-inspired settings that I can think of isn't "secondary world" fantasy (i.e. a setting such as Middle-Earth or Avatar's Four Nations that's on its face a different reality from our world, even if it's allegedly supposed to be a mythical past), but rather media with fantastic elements set in some version of or variation on the Western Hemisphere that actually exists. In that tradition, you have some of the works of Michael Chabon (Summerland in particular, which structures an elaborate fantasy cosmos specifically around the game of baseball), the Latin American "magic realism" tradition (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende (yes, she's Salvador's daughter), arguably the disgraced Junot Diaz), and probably lots of other US-American and Canadian writers who don't come to mind immediately. Borges in particular is remarkable because in addition to being strongly "rooted" in his native Buenos Aires his short stories also include mythical and allegorical elements from all over the world, especially the Middle East and Inner Asia.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

For some reason, most fantasy employing Western Hemisphere-inspired settings that I can think of isn't "secondary world" fantasy (i.e. a setting such as Middle-Earth or Avatar's Four Nations that's on its face a different reality from our world, even if it's allegedly supposed to be a mythical past), but rather media with fantastic elements set in some version of or variation on the Western Hemisphere that actually exists. In that tradition, you have some of the works of Michael Chabon (Summerland in particular, which structures an elaborate fantasy cosmos specifically around the game of baseball), the Latin American "magic realism" tradition (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende (yes, she's Salvador's daughter), arguably the disgraced Junot Diaz), and probably lots of other US-American and Canadian writers who don't come to mind immediately. Borges in particular is remarkable because in addition to being strongly "rooted" in his native Buenos Aires his short stories also include mythical and allegorical elements from all over the world, especially the Middle East and Inner Asia.

Thanks for your response!

I think to some extent the "for some reason" part is relatively easily explained--the current nation that occupies much of the continent is not steeped in several centuries, let alone millennia, of its own past in the literal manner of castles and fortresses and ancient cities and art the way a European might be. Moreover, there is existing folklore and myth to easily integrate into, allowing for a lot of tropes to filter out. I recall some painting on reddit a few months ago; per what I remember it shows a kid in the woods in what could be an American backyard happening upon a medieval warrior. It struck me that this of course could not be America in such a case (barring the Vikings), and if so it would be a Native American. It's up to the viewer to decide if that is simply his imagination, but I think that in part is what inspired this thread.  The "hero's journey" in Europe, real or fake, can be very hypothetical and begin in the swamps or bogs or high mountains of anywhere. For us in the United States and I guess the Western hemisphere, it must be literally in our backyard. The corresponding thing in Europe would be something like Harry Potter, the popularity of such a concept in young adult fiction we have definitely seen in this century (child in "real life" falls into magical world, whether it be wizardry or a place with talking six-foot rats--a book I love by the way). Chronicles of Narnia actually manages to serve both of these functions at once, with both the wandering into the unknown from the real world and a sort of alt-Europe, if I recall correctly (we even have one book taking place primarily in the "Middle East" of that realm).

I'm of course not qualified to comment on the rest as I'm not nearly that well-read, but I will note that Russian satirist Mikhail Bulgakov was also noted as a magical realist and I was quite the fan of The Master & Margarita when I read it a few summers ago.

[Anna Komnene]

I'd recommend the Daevabad trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty. It's a fantasy story based on One Thousand and One Nights that starts in Egypt but spends most of the time in Daevabad (the world of djinn). It's a highly developed world with thousands of years of politics and history, magic, romance, war, and betrayal. I think it's especially strong highlighting how war impacts all levels of society and how Nahri interacts with traditional power structures as a woman in Middle Eastern society. One of my favorite series I've read recently.

[Хahar 🤔]

For some reason, most fantasy employing Western Hemisphere-inspired settings that I can think of isn't "secondary world" fantasy (i.e. a setting such as Middle-Earth or Avatar's Four Nations that's on its face a different reality from our world, even if it's allegedly supposed to be a mythical past), but rather media with fantastic elements set in some version of or variation on the Western Hemisphere that actually exists. In that tradition, you have some of the works of Michael Chabon (Summerland in particular, which structures an elaborate fantasy cosmos specifically around the game of baseball), the Latin American "magic realism" tradition (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende (yes, she's Salvador's daughter), arguably the disgraced Junot Diaz), and probably lots of other US-American and Canadian writers who don't come to mind immediately. Borges in particular is remarkable because in addition to being strongly "rooted" in his native Buenos Aires his short stories also include mythical and allegorical elements from all over the world, especially the Middle East and Inner Asia.

I read Summerland in the spring of 2005, when I was ten years old and I was on a week-long field trip with my class in Tuolumne County. I remember sitting and reading it as I waited for my group to descend into Mercer Caverns. To this day my memories of that place and that time are bound up with that book. Certainly it enhanced my reading experience to be reading it in the mountains surrounded by wild things.

Even at the time I knew it wasn't really a great book, and I never considered it one of my favorites (it was far too scattershot for that), but anyone can easily imagine the effect that the idea of a mythos organized around baseball had on ten-year-old me.

[Sol]

For some reason, most fantasy employing Western Hemisphere-inspired settings that I can think of isn't "secondary world" fantasy (i.e. a setting such as Middle-Earth or Avatar's Four Nations that's on its face a different reality from our world, even if it's allegedly supposed to be a mythical past), but rather media with fantastic elements set in some version of or variation on the Western Hemisphere that actually exists. In that tradition, you have some of the works of Michael Chabon (Summerland in particular, which structures an elaborate fantasy cosmos specifically around the game of baseball), the Latin American "magic realism" tradition (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende (yes, she's Salvador's daughter), arguably the disgraced Junot Diaz), and probably lots of other US-American and Canadian writers who don't come to mind immediately. Borges in particular is remarkable because in addition to being strongly "rooted" in his native Buenos Aires his short stories also include mythical and allegorical elements from all over the world, especially the Middle East and Inner Asia.

Actually a cousin once removed, sorry for nitpicking.