The article highlights the issues concerning the genre-forming features of the epic novel, the forms of manifestation of the epic in a work of fiction. The consideration of the above-mentioned problems provides for the presence in the structure of the work of a theoretical preamble reflecting the characteristics of epopees’ accepted in literary studies (historicism, heroics, a wide panorama of people's life, the reconstruction of an epic picture of the world, a multidimensional reflection of reality, pronounced drama, historical and cultural context, social typing, a cross-section of the epoch refracted in the destinies of people) and the subsequent detailed analysis of local examples from the epic text. In order to identify the desired qualities (epic features) in the national novel, a holistic view of the laws of the formation of the genre is given, defining the epic as an indicator of the level of development of literature, the evolution of the historicism of the artist's thinking. The main attention in the study is focused on the study of structural and content particulars and narrative strategies in the novel "The Bridge of Sirat" by the Balkar prose writer A. Teppeev. The applicability of the proposed evaluation criteria when analyzing the compositional features of the work justifies its positioning as an epic narrative.