List of longest novels

Composing a list of longest novels yields different results depending on what criteria are used.

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 Chinese 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.

Longest novels in Latin or Cyrillic alphabets

The longest novels in Latin or Cyrillic alphabets include:

Book Title	Author	# of Words	Language	Volumes
Artamène	Madeleine and Georges de Scudéry	2,100,000	French	10
Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté	Jules Romains	2,070,000	French	27
In Search of Lost Time	Marcel Proust	1,500,000	French	7
L'Astrée	Honoré d'Urfé (completed by Balthazar Baro and Pierre Boitel)	1,422,700	French	6
Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady	Samuel Richardson	969,000 Third edition substantially increased text to over 1 million words.	English	9
Sironia, Texas	Madison Cooper	1,100,000 (est.)	English	2
Zettels Traum	Arno Schmidt	~1,000,000	German	1
Poor Fellow My Country	Xavier Herbert	850,000	English	1
Women and Men	Joseph McElroy	716,000	English	1
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling	Marguerite Young	700,000	English	1
Varney the Vampire	James Malcolm Rymer (alternatively attributed to Thomas Preskett Prest)	667,000	English	1
The Man Without Qualities	Robert Musil	657,000	German	3
Atlas Shrugged	Ayn Rand	645,000	English	1
The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later	Alexandre Dumas, père	626,000	French	1
A Suitable Boy	Vikram Seth	591,552	English	1
Infinite Jest	David Foster Wallace	575,000	English	1
War and Peace	Leo Tolstoy	560,000	Russian/French	4
Il mulino del Po	Riccardo Bacchelli	559,800	Italian	3
Remembrance Rock	Carl Sandburg	532,030	English	1
Les Misérables	Victor Hugo	513,000	French	1
Gordana	Marija Jurić Zagorka	5,600 pages	Croatian	8-12
I fantasmi di Mosca	Enzo Bettiza	2,007 pages	Italian	2

Longest novels in scripts other than Latin or Cyrillic

East Asian 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.[citation needed]	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	Kyokutei Bakin	960,000	Japanese	106 Original/10 Modern
Kuangshi Qiyuan	Yang Fuguo	840,000	Chinese
Romance of the Three Kingdoms	Luo Guanzhong	800,000	Chinese
Li Zicheng	Yao Xueyin	680,000	Chinese	5
Dream of the Red Chamber	Cao Xueqin	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 fanfiction.

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.[citation needed]
The Blah Story	Nigel Tomm	11,300,000[citation needed]	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.[citation needed]
Devta	Mohiuddin Nawab	11,206,310	Urdu	Considered by many to be a serialized story collection (later republished in 53 volumes).
The Story of the Vivian Girls	Henry Darger	9,000,000	English	Unpublished manuscript.
The Wheel of Time	Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson	4,012,859	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[citation needed]	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.[citation needed]
Mission Earth	L. Ron Hubbard	1,200,000	English	Ten-volume science fiction novel series intended to be a single novel but packaged and sold as separate works.
A Dance to the Music of Time	Anthony Powell	Over 1 million words/3,013 pages[citation needed]	English	Considered by many to be a novel cycle instead of a single novel.
Wall of Phantoms	Courtney Thomas	629,858	English	Self published
Fallout: Equestria	Kkat	624,747	English	Internet fanfiction.
Fallout: Equestria: Project Horizons	Somber	583,073	English	Internet fanfiction.

See also

• Word count