The phrase "a sort of tragedy" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation or event that has tragic elements but may not fit the traditional definition of a tragedy.
Example: "The story unfolded like a sort of tragedy, leaving the audience in deep contemplation about the choices made by the characters."
Alternatives: "a kind of tragedy" or "a type of tragedy".
"But his career at the C.I.A. was a sort of a tragedy.
It's a sort of screwball tragedy that's meticulously written and filmed — in a black-and-white palette, no less — but that betrays no favor-currying nostalgia for the tuxedo age.
In fact, when I was with any of my friends that were doing that, I always looked at the death of the animal as a sort of mini tragedy, a transgression of the sanctity of life.
In De Quincey's mind, the disappearance was, like Margaret's pregnancy, an interlude terminated by a transformative event: the Malay, he worried, would be found dead, poisoned by the drugs; likewise, his child would be born, which struck De Quincey as a different sort of tragedy.
So was this a sort of natural disaster, a medical tragedy?
It was a sort of emotional catastrophe, decades of terrible tragedy.
He writes that Lincoln knew Shakespeare's body of work so well that quotations from the plays "came as naturally to him as breathing," and that he came to see Shakespeare's tragedies as a sort of correlative to the tragedy America faced during the Civil War.
He said: "I'm sure at the time it was just a laugh or a good joke but this is the sort of tragedy that can stay with a family for the rest of their lives".
What I found was not what I expected: it was much better and a long way from the sort of tragedy that unfolded in the trial of the accused killer of American Sniper Chris Kyle.
But, however it played out, this sort of tragedy is a natural consequence of giving weapons to violent men who feel that their powerful sponsor allows them to commit crimes with impunity.
