Composing a list of longest novels yields different results depending on what criteria are used.
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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.
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[1] | 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[2] Third edition substantially increased text to over 1 million words. | English | 9 |
| Sironia, Texas | Madison Cooper | 1,100,000[3] (est.)[4] | English | 2 |
| Zettels Traum | Arno Schmidt | ~1,000,000 | German | 1 |
| Poor Fellow My Country | Xavier Herbert | 850,000[5] | English | 1 |
| Women and Men | Joseph McElroy | 716,000 | English | 1 |
| Miss MacIntosh, My Darling | Marguerite Young | 700,000[6] | English | 1 |
| Varney the Vampire | James Malcolm Rymer (alternatively attributed to Thomas Preskett Prest) | 667,000[7] | English | 1 |
| The Man Without Qualities | Robert Musil | 657,000 | German | 3 |
| Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | 645,000[8] | English | 1 |
| The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later | Alexandre Dumas, père | 626,000[9][10][11] | French | 1 |
| A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth | 591,552[12] | English | 1 |
| Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | 575,000[13] | English | 1 |
| War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | 560,000[14] | Russian/French | 4 |
| Il mulino del Po | Riccardo Bacchelli | 559,800 | Italian | 3 |
| Remembrance Rock | Carl Sandburg | 532,030[15] | 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 |
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. | Japanese | 40 Original/13 Modern |
| Daibosatsu Toge | Nakazato Kaizan | 1,140,000[16] | Japanese | 41 Original |
| Avakasikal | Vilasini | 989,500[17] | Malayalam | 4 |
| Dream of the Pomegranate Flowers | Li Guiyu | 967,680[18] | Chinese | |
| The Eight Dog Chronicles | Kyokutei Bakin | 960,000 | Japanese | 106 Original/10 Modern |
| Kuangshi Qiyuan | Yang Fuguo | 840,000[19] | 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[20] | Chinese | 5 |
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[21] | 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 | 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.[22] |
| 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. |
| A Dance to the Music of Time | Anthony Powell | 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[23] | English | Self-published fanfiction. |
| Knickers | Simon Roberts | 2,000,000[24] | 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 | L. Ron Hubbard | 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 | 629,858 | English | Self published |
| Fallout: Equestria | Kkat | 624,747 (as of Afterword, not including TOC) [25] | English | Internet fanfiction. [26] |