List of longest novels
Encyclopedia
Composing a list of longest novels yields different results depending on what criteria are used.
and Korean languages, each character expresses one syllable, significantly reducing the number of characters needed to express one word. Japanese
, borrowing its word roots in part from Chinese, uses a combination of ideographs combined with syllabic symbols for inflection.
What counts as a novel is another variable. For the purposes of the first two lists in the article, a novel is defined as a single work in print or electronic form that is not published by the author but rather through a mainstream publisher (i.e., not a vanity
or print on demand
company) that acquires publishing rights from authors. Due to this definition, these lists intentionally omit a number of other very long works, which are represented by the third list in the article.
Novel cycles are essentially multivolume books that share a fictional universe. They can be read independently; however, in the case of some novel cycles there is debate that the works are actually single novels published in separate books. Authors and publishers might disagree on how to publish literary works and break up a novel into a series and vice versa. Word counts can easily climb into the millions. Noteworthy examples include the 11.2 million-word Devta
series by Mohiuddin Nawab; the Wheel of Time
fantasy series with more than 4 million words written by Robert Jordan
and Brandon Sanderson
; and A Dance to the Music of Time
by Anthony Powell
, a series of 12 novels published from 1951 to 1975 and topping out at over 1 million words.
The advent of very inexpensive self publishing has allowed authors to easily and inexpensively create a literary work that meets all of the conventional criteria that a text must meet to be called a novel. Some very long examples have generated considerable attention from the mass media, such as the 17-million-word Marienbad My Love by Mark Leach and the 11.3 million-word The Blah Story by Nigel Tomm. The Story of the Vivian Girls, a nine-million-word novel by outsider artist Henry Darger
has never been published but continues to generate considerable attention from art critics and the media.
or Cyrillic alphabets include:
n languages, like Chinese or Japanese, are more compact in their written forms than their Western counterparts. As such these works are often lengthier in translations even if their character spacing required are the same as when compared to Cyrillic or Latin alphabets.
.
Definitions
While word and character figures are common standards, the meanings of word and character vary depending on the language used. In alphabetic writing, letters are combined to make syllables, which are combined to make words. In the ChineseChinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
and Korean languages, each character expresses one syllable, significantly reducing the number of characters needed to express one word. Japanese
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
, borrowing its word roots in part from Chinese, uses a combination of ideographs combined with syllabic symbols for inflection.
What counts as a novel is another variable. For the purposes of the first two lists in the article, a novel is defined as a single work in print or electronic form that is not published by the author but rather through a mainstream publisher (i.e., not a vanity
Vanity press
A vanity press or vanity publisher is a term describing a publishing house that publishes books at the author's expense. Publisher Johnathon Clifford claims to have coined the term in 1959. However, the term appears in mainstream U.S...
or print on demand
Print on demand
Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...
company) that acquires publishing rights from authors. Due to this definition, these lists intentionally omit a number of other very long works, which are represented by the third list in the article.
Novel cycles are essentially multivolume books that share a fictional universe. They can be read independently; however, in the case of some novel cycles there is debate that the works are actually single novels published in separate books. Authors and publishers might disagree on how to publish literary works and break up a novel into a series and vice versa. Word counts can easily climb into the millions. Noteworthy examples include the 11.2 million-word Devta
Devta
Devta is a serialized fantasy story written in the Urdu language by Mohiuddin Nawab. It was published monthly for 33 years in the Pakistani magazine Suspense Digest, which is available in Pakistan, India and various parts of world where Urdu is spoken...
series by Mohiuddin Nawab; the Wheel of Time
Wheel of time
The Wheel of time or wheel of history is a concept found in several religious traditions and philosophies, notably religions of Indian origin such as Hinduism and Buddhism, which regard time as cyclical and consisting of repeating ages...
fantasy series with more than 4 million words written by Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr. , under which he was best known as the author of the bestselling The Wheel of Time fantasy series. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Reagan O'Neal and Jackson O'Reilly.-Biography:Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina...
and Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson is an American fantasy author. A Nebraska native, he currently resides in American Fork, Utah. He earned his Master's degree in Creative Writing in 2005 from Brigham Young University, where he was on the staff of Leading Edge, a semi-professional speculative fiction magazine...
; and A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim...
by Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....
, a series of 12 novels published from 1951 to 1975 and topping out at over 1 million words.
The advent of very inexpensive self publishing has allowed authors to easily and inexpensively create a literary work that meets all of the conventional criteria that a text must meet to be called a novel. Some very long examples have generated considerable attention from the mass media, such as the 17-million-word Marienbad My Love by Mark Leach and the 11.3 million-word The Blah Story by Nigel Tomm. The Story of the Vivian Girls, a nine-million-word novel by outsider artist Henry Darger
Henry Darger
Henry Joseph Darger, Jr. was a reclusive American writer and artist who worked as a custodian in Chicago, Illinois...
has never been published but continues to generate considerable attention from art critics and the media.
Longest novels in Latin or Cyrillic alphabets
The longest novels in LatinLatin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
or Cyrillic alphabets include:
| Book Title | Author | # of Words | Language | Volumes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Artamène Artamène Artamène, or Cyrus the Great is a novel in ten volumes by siblings Madeleine and Georges de Scudéry. At over 2,100,000 words, it is considered the longest novel ever written, with the possible exception of Henry Darger's unpublished The Story of the Vivian Girls.... |
Madeleine Madeleine de Scudéry Madeleine de Scudéry , often known simply as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer. She was the younger sister of author Georges de Scudéry.-Biography:... and Georges de Scudéry Georges de Scudéry Georges de Scudéry , the elder brother of Madeleine de Scudéry, was a French novelist, dramatist and poet.Georges de Scudéry was born in Le Havre, in Normandy, whither his father had moved from Provence... |
2,100,000 | French | 10 |
| Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté | Jules Romains Jules Romains Jules Romains, born Louis Henri Jean Farigoule , was a French poet and writer and the founder of the Unanimism literary movement... |
2,070,000 | French | 27 |
| In Search of Lost Time In Search of Lost Time In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely... |
Marcel Proust Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu... |
1,500,000 | French | 7 |
| L'Astrée L'Astrée L’Astrée is a pastoral novel by Honoré d'Urfé, published between 1607 and 1627.Possibly the single most influential work of 17th century French literature, Astrée has been called the "novel of novels", partly for its immense length but also for the success it had throughout Europe: it was... |
Honoré d'Urfé Honoré d'Urfé Honoré d'Urfé, marquis de Valromey, comte de Châteauneuf was a French novelist and miscellaneous writer.- Life :... (completed by Balthazar Baro Balthazar Baro Balthazar Baro was a French poet, playwright and romance-writer.-Life:The son of a professor at the university of Valence, Baro studied at Tournon-sur-Rhône then at Valence, where he gained his law doctorate in 1615.... and Pierre Boitel) |
1,422,700 | French | 6 |
| Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady | Samuel Richardson Samuel Richardson Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison... |
969,000 Third edition substantially increased text to over 1 million words. | English | 9 |
| Sironia, Texas | Madison Cooper Madison Cooper Madison Alexander Cooper, Jr., was an American businessman and philanthropist from Waco, Texas, and is best remembered for his long novel Sironia, Texas , which made publishing history at that time as the longest novel in English originally published in book form, at an estimated 1.1 million... |
1,100,000 (est.) | English | 2 |
| Zettels Traum Zettels Traum Zettels Traum is a novel written in 1970 by German author Arno Schmidt. Schmidt began writing the novel in December 1963 while he and Hans Wollschläger began to translate the works of Edgar Allan Poe into German... |
Arno Schmidt Arno Schmidt Arno Schmidt was a German author and translator.-Biography:Born in Hamburg, son of a police constable, Schmidt moved with his widowed mother to Lauban and attended the secondary school in Görlitz. He then worked as a clerk in a textile company in Greiffenberg... |
~1,000,000 | German | 1 |
| Poor Fellow My Country Poor Fellow My Country Poor Fellow My Country is a Miles Franklin Award winning novel by Australian author Xavier Herbert. It is the longest Australian book ever written. Primarily, it is the story of Jeremy Delacy and his illegitimate grandson Prindy in the years leading up to World War II... |
Xavier Herbert Xavier Herbert Xavier Herbert was an Australian writer best known for his Miles Franklin Award-winning novel Poor Fellow My Country . He is considered one of the elder statesmen of Australian literature... |
850,000 | English | 1 |
| Women and Men | Joseph McElroy Joseph McElroy Joseph McElroy is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist.McElroy grew up in Brooklyn Heights, NY, a neighborhood that features prominently in much of his fiction. He received his B.A. from Williams College in 1951 and his M.A. from Columbia University in 1952... |
716,000 | English | 1 |
| Miss MacIntosh, My Darling | Marguerite Young Marguerite Young Marguerite Vivian Young was an American author of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and criticism. Her work evinced an interest in social issues and environmentalism.... |
700,000 | English | 1 |
| Varney the Vampire Varney the Vampire Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood was a Victorian era serialized gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer . It first appeared in 1845–47 as a series of cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as "penny dreadfuls". The story was published in book form in 1847... |
James Malcolm Rymer James Malcolm Rymer James Malcolm Rymer was a British nineteenth century writer of penny dreadfuls, and is the probable author of Varney the Vampire and co-author of The String of Pearls , in which the notorious villain Sweeney Todd makes his literary debut.Information about Rymer is sketchy... (alternatively attributed to Thomas Preskett Prest) |
667,000 | English | 1 |
| The Man Without Qualities The Man Without Qualities The Man Without Qualities is an unfinished novel in three books by the Austrian writer Robert Musil.... |
Robert Musil Robert Musil Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels... |
657,000 | German | 3 |
| Atlas Shrugged Atlas Shrugged Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing... |
Ayn Rand Ayn Rand Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.... |
645,000 | English | 1 |
| The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later | Alexandre Dumas, père Alexandre Dumas, père Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world... |
626,000 | French | 1 |
| A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth Vikram Seth Vikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist.-Early life:Vikram Seth was born on 20 June 1952 to Leila and Prem Seth in Calcutta... |
591,552 | English | 1 |
| Infinite Jest Infinite Jest Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel by David Foster Wallace. The lengthy and complex work takes place in a semi-parodic future version of North America, and touches on tennis, substance addiction and recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising and popular entertainment,... |
David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California... |
575,000 | English | 1 |
| War and Peace War and Peace War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature... |
Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist... |
560,000 | Russian/French | 4 |
| Il mulino del Po | Riccardo Bacchelli Riccardo Bacchelli Riccardo Bacchelli was an Italian writer.His first novel was Il filo meraviglioso di Lodovico Clo’ . Then he wrote La città degli amanti . He was one of the founders of the Bagutta Prize.His more popular work was Il mulino del Po ,... |
559,800 | Italian | 3 |
| Remembrance Rock | Carl Sandburg Carl Sandburg Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,... |
532,030 | English | 1 |
| Les Misérables Les Misérables Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century... |
Victor Hugo Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France.... |
513,000 | French | 1 |
| Gordana | Marija Jurić Zagorka Marija Juric Zagorka Marija Jurić, pen-name Zagorka was a Croatian journalist, novelist and dramatist. She was the first female journalist and among the most read writers in Croatia.... |
5,600 pages | Croatian | 8-12 |
| I fantasmi di Mosca | Enzo Bettiza Enzo Bettiza Enzo Bettiza is a Dalmatian-born Italian novelist, journalist and politician.-Biography:Bettiza was born in Dalmatia, in a rich family of the Italian minority. His mother stemmed from a family of the Croatian isle of Brač... |
2,007 pages | Italian | 2 |
Longest novels in scripts other than Latin or Cyrillic
East AsiaEast Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
n languages, like Chinese or Japanese, are more compact in their written forms than their Western counterparts. As such these works are often lengthier in translations even if their character spacing required are the same as when compared to Cyrillic or Latin alphabets.
| Book Title | Author | # of Words (when converted to Latin or Cyrillic) | Language | Volumes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tokugawa Ieyasu | Sohachi Yamaoka | aprx. 20,000,000. | Japanese | 40 Original/13 Modern |
| Daibosatsu Toge | Nakazato Kaizan | 1,140,000 | Japanese | 41 Original |
| Avakasikal | Vilasini | 989,500 | Malayalam | 4 |
| Dream of the Pomegranate Flowers | Li Guiyu | 967,680 | Chinese | |
| The Eight Dog Chronicles Nanso Satomi Hakkenden is a Japanese 106 volume epic novel by Kyokutei Bakin. Written over a period of nearly thirty years and published from 1814 to 1842, Bakin had gone blind before finishing the tale, and the final parts were dictated to his daughter-in-law Michi to be transcribed... |
Kyokutei Bakin Kyokutei Bakin was a late Japanese Edo period gesaku author best known for works such as Nansō Satomi Hakkenden and Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki.-Life:He was born as , he wrote under the pen name which is a pun as the kanji may also be read as Kuruwa de Makoto meaning a man who is truly devoted to the courtesans of... |
960,000 | Japanese | 106 Original/10 Modern |
| Kuangshi Qiyuan | Yang Fuguo | 840,000 | Chinese | |
| Romance of the Three Kingdoms Romance of the Three Kingdoms Romance of the Three Kingdoms, written by Luo Guanzhong in the 14th century, is a Chinese historical novel based on the events in the turbulent years near the end of the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history, starting in 169 and ending with the reunification of the land in... |
Luo Guanzhong Luo Guanzhong Luo Ben , better known by his style name Luo Guanzhong , was a Chinese writer of the early Ming Dynasty period of Chinese history. He was also known as Huhai Sanren... |
800,000 | Chinese | |
| Li Zicheng | Yao Xueyin | 680,000 | Chinese | 5 |
| Dream of the Red Chamber Dream of the Red Chamber Dream of the Red Chamber , composed by Cao Xueqin, is one of China's Four Great Classical Novels. It was composed in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty. It is considered to be a masterpiece of Chinese vernacular literature and is generally acknowledged to be a pinnacle of... |
Cao Xueqin Cao Xueqin Cao Xueqin was a Qing Dynasty Chinese writer, best known as the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature... |
625,000 | Chinese | 5 |
Longest self-published and controversial novels
In the digital era, self publication of works is more readily accessible and those within this section are novels that have garnered media attention for their length, but still have conflicting merits which prevent universal recognition. Entries here may appear as novels, but as a whole have disputed nature or are self-published works of fanfictionFan fiction
Fan fiction is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator...
.
| Book Title | Author | # of Words | Language | Reason for Dispute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marienbad My Love | Mark Leach | 17,000,000 | English | Self-published experimental fiction (innovations regarding technique and style include the use of text collage) that does not conform to common opinions of what constitutes a novel. |
| The Blah Story | Nigel Tomm | 11,300,000 | English | Self-published experimental fiction (innovations regarding technique and style include the use of text composed mainly of 'blah's) that does not conform to common opinions of what constitutes a novel. |
| Devta Devta Devta is a serialized fantasy story written in the Urdu language by Mohiuddin Nawab. It was published monthly for 33 years in the Pakistani magazine Suspense Digest, which is available in Pakistan, India and various parts of world where Urdu is spoken... |
Mohiuddin Nawab | 11,206,310 | Urdu Urdu Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an... |
Considered by many to be a serialized story collection (later republished in 53 volumes). |
| The Story of the Vivian Girls | Henry Darger Henry Darger Henry Joseph Darger, Jr. was a reclusive American writer and artist who worked as a custodian in Chicago, Illinois... |
9,000,000 | English | Unpublished manuscript. |
| The Wheel of Time The Wheel of Time The Wheel of Time is a series of epic fantasy novels written by American author James Oliver Rigney, Jr., under the pen name Robert Jordan. Originally planned as a six-book series, the length was increased by increments; at the time of Rigney's death, he expected it to be 12, but it will actually... |
Robert Jordan Robert Jordan Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr. , under which he was best known as the author of the bestselling The Wheel of Time fantasy series. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Reagan O'Neal and Jackson O'Reilly.-Biography:Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina... and Brandon Sanderson Brandon Sanderson Brandon Sanderson is an American fantasy author. A Nebraska native, he currently resides in American Fork, Utah. He earned his Master's degree in Creative Writing in 2005 from Brigham Young University, where he was on the staff of Leading Edge, a semi-professional speculative fiction magazine... |
4,012,859 | English | Considered by many to be a novel cycle instead of a single novel. |
| A Dance to the Music of Time A Dance to the Music of Time A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim... |
Anthony Powell Anthony Powell Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975.... |
Over 1 million words/3,013 pages | English | Considered by many to be a novel cycle instead of a single novel. |
| Trial by Tenderness | Cevn McGuire | 2,162,158 | English | Self-published fanfiction. |
| Knickers | Simon Roberts | 2,000,000 | English | Self-published experimental fiction (innovations regarding technique and style include the use of word repetition; chapter 14 is mostly the word "thanks" repeated between pages 52 and 2069) that does not conform to common opinions of what constitutes a novel. |
| Mission Earth Mission Earth Mission Earth may refer to:*Mission Earth , novel published as a series broken into ten volumes, written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard... |
L. Ron Hubbard L. Ron Hubbard Lafayette Ronald Hubbard , better known as L. Ron Hubbard , was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology... |
1,200,000 | English | Ten-volume science fiction novel series considered by many to be a single novel packaged and sold as separate works. |
| Wall of Phantoms | Courtney Thomas Courtney Thomas Courtney Elizabeth Thomas, is an American beauty pageant titleholder from the village of Sigel in Eldred Township Pennsylvania who was named Miss Pennsylvania 2010.-Biography:... |
629,858 | English | Self published |