There is a category of novel I've started thinking of as 'compressed epics' — novels that have the scope and ambition of an epic but are executed in under 300 pages. They achieve the feeling of having covered vast ground through implication and elision rather than exhaustive narration.

Examples: Beloved by Morrison (the whole history of slavery and its aftermath in 275 pages). Blood Meridian (the violence of the American frontier as philosophical statement in 337 pages). The Waves by Woolf (six lives from youth to age in 230 pages). Each of these novels feels larger than it is because the prose is bearing the weight of everything it doesn't say explicitly.

The compressed epic is harder to write than either the conventional epic or the brief lyric. It requires knowing exactly what to show and what to leave in the dark.