• Long Novels - Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  • Long Novels - Homeland (Patria) by Fernando Aramburu and Alfred MacAdam (translator)
  • Long Novels - Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler
  • Long Novels - In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
  • Long Novels - The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu & translated by Edward G. Seidensticker
  • Long Novels - Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

Long Novels

Shorter is better is the mantra of the digital age, but for some of us, there is no greater pleasure than reading a really long novel. Here we’ve listed some of the novels recommended on Five Books that are 400,000 words or more long, from literary classics to potboilers.

  • Short Novels - Orbital by Samantha Harvey
  • Short Novels - Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
  • Short Novels - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor (narrator)
  • Short Novels - The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, translated by Ruth L. C. Simms
  • Short Novels - Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  • Short Novels - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Short Novels

A short novel can be the perfect way to occupy the mind during an empty evening or a long journey. One can also appreciate a well-written book’s true complexity when it can be read and digested in a single, immersive sitting. Here, we’ve pulled together a list of short literary novels—most of them fewer than 200 pages in length—that have been recommended on Five Books over the years.