The greatest novels The longest works in the history of literature

Not all writers agree with the statement "Brevity is the sister of talent." In today's selection, we offer the longest novels in the history of literature. The authors spent years on their creation. But it will take a lot of time to read them.

By the way, the novel "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy hit the top ten, so every Russian schoolboy can proudly say that he is familiar with one of the longest books firsthand.

10. "Tokugawa Ieyasu", S. Yamaoka
This novel was published piecemeal in Japanese newspapers. If you collect all the parts into a single work, you get at least 40 volumes. The plot of the novel is dedicated to the first shogun of the Tokugawa clan, who united the country and established peace in it.

9. Quiet Flows the Don, M. Sholokhov
All four books that make up the novel are about 1,500 pages long. There are 982 characters in the novel, of which 363 are real historical characters. For "Quiet Don" Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize with the consent of Stalin.

8. Les Misérables, V. Hugo
Hugo created one of his main works over the course of eighteen years - from 1834 to 1852. Then the author revised the text several times, adding and removing various fragments.

7. "In Search of Lost Time", M. Proust
This is a whole cycle of 7 novels, in which there are more than two thousand characters. Books abound with emotional outbursts, bizarre twists in the story. In total, "In Search of Lost Time" has more than one and a half million words, which occupy about 3,200 pages.

6. The Forsyte Saga, D. Galsworthy
The novel of the Nobel laureate strikes with clearly defined images of the characters. The work covers the history of the family from 1680 to the 1930s. "Saga" formed the basis of 6 adaptations, the most recent of which has a duration of 11.5 hours.

5. "War and Peace", L. Tolstoy
Anyone who has read War and Peace can be divided into two categories. Some are completely delighted with the novel, others cannot stand it. But the landmark work in three volumes does not leave anyone indifferent.

4. Quincanx, C. Palliser
This work is a modern pastiche of a Victorian novel. Each of the two volumes has a volume of 800 pages, depending on the edition. The plot is full of mysteries, symbolism and unexpected twists.

3. "Ulysses", J. Joyce
The novel is considered one of the finest works of English-language prose. Ulysses was written over the course of seven long years, and tells of one day in Dublin, a Jew, Leopold Bloom. The novel was first published in installments between 1918 and 1920.

2. "Astrea", O. d'Urfe
The novel was written in 21 years of hard work. The work in the first edition fit on 5,399 pages. Published in 1607, the novel tells about the love between the shepherdess Astrea and the shepherd Celadon. The book contains a lot of false novels and poetic inclusions.

1. "People of good will", R. Jules
The novel by the French playwright, writer and poet has been published in 27 volumes. The work has more than two million words on 4,959 pages. The table of contents of the longest novel in the world has about 50 pages. It is noteworthy that the book does not have a single and clear storyline, and the number of characters exceeds four hundred.

Not all writers agree with the statement "Brevity is the sister of talent." In today's selection, we offer longest novels in literary history. The authors spent years on their creation. But it will take a lot of time to read them.

By the way, the novel "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy hit the top ten, so every Russian schoolboy can proudly say that he is familiar with one of the longest books firsthand.

10. "Tokugawa Ieyasu", S. Yamaoka

This novel was published piecemeal in Japanese newspapers. If you collect all the parts into a single work, you get at least 40 volumes. The plot of the novel is dedicated to the first shogun of the Tokugawa clan, who united the country and established peace in it.

9. Quiet Flows the Don, M. Sholokhov

All four books that make up the novel are about 1,500 pages long. There are 982 characters in the novel, of which 363 are real historical characters. For "Quiet Don" Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize with the consent of Stalin.

8. Les Misérables, V. Hugo

Hugo created one of his main works over the course of eighteen years - from 1834 to 1852. Then the author revised the text several times, adding and removing various fragments.

7. "In Search of Lost Time", M. Proust

This is a whole cycle of 7 novels, in which there are more than two thousand characters. Books abound with emotional outbursts, bizarre twists in the story. In total, "In Search of Lost Time" has more than one and a half million words, which occupy about 3,200 pages.

6. The Forsyte Saga, D. Galsworthy

The novel of the Nobel laureate strikes with clearly defined images of the characters. The work covers the history of the family from 1680 to the 1930s. "Saga" formed the basis of 6 adaptations, the most recent of which has a duration of 11.5 hours.

5. "War and Peace", L. Tolstoy

Anyone who has read War and Peace can be divided into two categories. Some are completely delighted with the novel, others cannot stand it. But the landmark work in three volumes does not leave anyone indifferent.

4. Quincanx, C. Palliser

This work is a modern pastiche of a Victorian novel. Each of the two volumes has a volume of 800 pages, depending on the edition. The plot is full of mysteries, symbolism and unexpected twists.

3. Ulysses, J. Joy

The novel is considered one of the finest works of English-language prose. Ulysses was written over the course of seven long years, and tells of one day in Dublin, a Jew, Leopold Bloom. The novel was first published in installments between 1918 and 1920.

2. "Astrea", O. d'Urfe

The novel was written in 21 years of hard work. The work in the first edition fit on 5,399 pages. Published in 1607, the novel tells about the love between the shepherdess Astrea and the shepherd Celadon. The book contains a lot of false novels and poetic inclusions.

1. "People of good will", R. Jules

The novel by the French playwright, writer and poet has been published in 27 volumes. The work has more than two million words on 4,959 pages. The table of contents of the longest novel in the world has about 50 pages. It is noteworthy that the book does not have a single and clear storyline, and the number of characters exceeds four hundred.

Here are the top 12 longest works in the history of literature, which prove that not every catchphrase should be blindly believed.

James Joyce (1882-1941)
"Ulysses" (1922)

The main character is Leopold Bloom, a Dublin Jew. The day is filled with events - Bloom manages to visit a funeral, on the bay, in a maternity hospital, in a brothel, and in several other places in between. The plot of the novel revolves around the infidelity of Bloom's wife. However, it is impossible to describe this work in such a flat and everyday way.

In the semantic depths of "Ulysses" one can see analogies and allusions to many works and heroes of world literature, to the archetypes of the feminine and masculine principles, and to the relations of generations. The most obvious, of course, is the reference to Homer's Odyssey, which Joyce considered one of the most universal myths.

1926

The novel does not have a single style - the author parodies or imitates different styles and different authors, as if playing with all layers of the world literary heritage. This novel is a mirror, which reflects the whole world, merged into one city and all times, united in one day.

Stream of Consciousness, the style of Joyce's novel, allows you to see the characters from the inside, as if trying on someone else's life, which, it turns out, is not so different from your own.

The plot is the boy's search for his father and an attempt to unravel the reasons for the series of events that haunt the hero and his mother. The novel, despite its rather large volume (from 800 pages, depending on the edition), has a very clear and rigid structure in which every word and action, even at first glance trifling, is in its place.

Each of the narrators inside the novel has his own subjective view of what is happening, which does not help the reader to figure out where the truth is hidden. She, as they say, is always somewhere nearby.

A very atmospheric and multi-layered novel in which the author managed to keep the intrigue to the last word.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
"War and Peace" (1865-1869)

Americans call "War and Peace" one of the main works of mankind. Well, those who read in the original are divided into two groups: some are delighted with the novel, and the latter cannot stand it. This is not counting those who did not master the text at all.

To some, the language of Lev Nikolaevich seems cumbersome and clumsy, some even call him a graphomaniac. And, for example, Boris Strugatsky believes that: “language can be clumsy and filled with gallicisms (like Leo Tolstoy), clumsy, incorrect and even unnatural (like Dostoevsky), abstruse and unreadable (like Platonov or Velimir Khlebnikov) - and all while being able to exert a strong, sometimes inexplicable, purely emotional impact on the reader.

Everyone who was forced to study Tolstoy's novel as part of the school curriculum has his own opinion and vision. As a rule, this reading is difficult for a teenager. Maybe the secret is to read "War and Peace" at the right time, that is, when you can already realize what a family, duty and love for the Fatherland are. In general, when abstract concepts become real things.

John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
The Forsyte Saga (1906-1921)

Generation after generation of Forsytes pass before the reader in three large cycles of novels - The Forsyte Saga, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. Each of the Forsytes is an extraordinary personality, the characters of the characters are written by the author so subtly that over time it begins to seem as if they are not only alive, but also people you know well. Family ties, which are difficult to track at first, become clear and familiar, each figure of the family takes its place and one overall picture is formed.

And the scenery for the life of the Forsytes is the events that take place in the world. And, of course, money. After all, the Forsyte money is a kind of refrain to this story. They love, fight, die and are born against the backdrop of capital.

Forsytes, you know, are people who dispose of their capital in such a way that their grandchildren, if they had to die before their parents, were forced to make a will on their property, which, however, does not become their possession until after death. their parents. Do you understand this? Well, neither do I, but be that as it may, it's a fact; we live by the principle: “as long as it is possible to keep capital in the family, it should not leave it”

Proust did not have time to edit the last three volumes, they were published after his death. The first volume of the cycle - "Toward Swann" was not too favorably received by critics, but this did not bother Proust, because he considered the main goal of this novel to be self-knowledge through associative perception - emotional outbursts, quirks of memory.

This quote, as the leitmotif of the work, is the most correct definition of the lost time that Proust himself, or anyone else, has ever found:

“The past is out of reach, in some thing (in the sense that we get from it), where we least expected to find it. Whether we find this thing in our lifetime or never find it is pure chance.”

The writer himself spoke of him as follows:

“As long as poverty and ignorance reign on earth, books like this cannot be useless. I wish to destroy the evil rock that weighs on humanity; I stigmatize slavery, I persecute poverty, I eradicate ignorance, I cure diseases, I illuminate darkness, I hate hatred. That's what my beliefs are, and that's why I wrote Les Misérables."

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

Dostoevsky conceived The Karamazovs as the first part of The Great Sinner, but did not have time to realize his plan. However, even without continuation, this, without exaggeration, a great work provides many topics for reflection.

You can believe or not believe in the special faith of Russians, share or not share the attitude towards the “mysterious Russian soul”, you can be critical of the detective component of the novel - it is unlikely that Dostoevsky’s competitor to Agatha Christie is not the point.

The essence of the Karamazov family, with all its background and background, is the psychological roots of the behavior of each of the members of this family and the common root for all - provincial Russia, the Orthodox faith.

Twenty-seven volumes, more than four hundred characters, twenty-five years of the life of the country is a lot. There is no unity of action or plot - this novel is like a journey through the layers of French society of the early twentieth century - lawyers and officials, workers and artists, bankers and teachers pass before the reader.

What is especially interesting is that each hero of Roman, like a living person, develops, changes, reacts to the events of external and internal life - this is not a faceless series of characters, this is a community of individuals, people of good will.

Sohachi Yamaoka (1907-1978)

(published in Japanese dailies since 1951)

This is the story of the shogun who united Japan into a single country. A reformer who brought peace to his country, and problems to the foreigners who inhabited it.

It was Tokugawa Ieyasu who began the mass repression of Christians, and also banned the Japanese from navigation and even the construction of ships capable of long voyages. And this despite the fact that his adviser was the Englishman William Adams.

The longest American novel. This book cannot be found in Russian, perhaps because it is a specifically American work, or perhaps it is simply too much work for translators.

Sironia, Texas is one of those American novels that celebrates small towns and their simple lives. Where everything is slow, everyone knows everyone, the main line of life for everyone is Main Street, and all visitors, even after twenty years of living side by side, remain a little stranger.

The heroine - the girl Clarissa - dies, dishonored by the society lion Robert Lovelace. The surname of the antihero has become a household name, although today not many people know where, in fact, the name “Lovelace” came from.

This novel, not too "driven" for modern tastes, was a breakthrough not only in Richardson's work, but also generally significant against the background of other works of that time - the tragic death of an innocent victim, the noble revenge and punishment of a scoundrel - an exciting plot for a leisurely eighteenth-century audience, not spoiled by events in novels. The public was especially struck by the lack of a happy ending. The writer was even offered to rewrite the work, but he insisted on his own and the “History of a Young Lady” has come down to us in the same form in which it was first presented to readers.

At one time, she made a splash and enjoyed a rush of popularity among the aristocrats of France and Germany. By the way, the images of many of the heroes of the book were written from famous people contemporary to the author. This novel was highly regarded by many writers and playwrights - for example, Moliere, Corneille and La Rochefoucauld.

The mention of L. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" somehow immediately prompted memories of reading it in my school years. Few people have mastered this grandiose work in its scope and design. It seemed to many that four volumes were simply unbearable. Naturally, I wanted to look for more voluminous works, so to speak. And, of course, there were some.

The novel by the Japanese chronicler Sohachi Yamaoka "Tokugawa Ieyasu", since 1951, was published in parts in Japanese daily newspapers. Today, the novel Tokugawa Ieyasu is completed, and if it is reprinted in its entirety, it will be a 40-volume edition. It is not known if this will ever happen, but the fact remains! The novel tells about the adventures of the first shogun of the Tokugawa clan, who united Japan and established peace in the country for many years.

The longest work in the history of literature is the novel "People of Goodwill" by the French writer, poet and playwright, member of the French Academy Romain Jules (real name - Louis Henri Jean Farigoule). "Men of Goodwill" is a complete publication that can be purchased and read in sequence. It was published in twenty-seven volumes from 1932 to 1946. It is estimated that the volume of the novel was 4959 pages, and the words in it are approximately 2,070,000 (not counting the 100-page index and 50-page table of contents). For comparison, the Bible has about 773,700 words.

In the novel "People of Good Will" Jules tried to understand and explain the historical processes that took place in France in the thirties from the point of view of his right-wing views. The work in prose was supposed to express in all its diversity and the smallest details the picture of the contemporary world for the author.

The book does not have a clear plot, and the number of characters exceeds four hundred. “People of good will! Under the sign of an ancient blessing, we will seek them in the crowd and find them. ... let them find some sure way to recognize each other in the crowd, so that this world does not perish, the honor and salt of which they are.

In the preface of his long creative marathon, the author questioned the structure of writing Balzac masterpieces such as Proust and Roland. Because he considered unacceptable the "mechanistic" idea of ​​writing multi-volume novels, where the whole is revealed through a single person. That is, Jules Romain himself, publishing his first volume back in 1932, was confident in the idea of ​​the confusion and disorder of the plot and the life of all its heroes (and as already mentioned, there were about 400 of them in "People of Good Will").

The longest book really has everything: criminality and spirituality, wealth and poverty, politics and culture. And, of course, all events are supported by the ideas of the history of that time. In general, the novel told about the events of 1908-1933. The author of this work rather tried to help understand all the ups and downs of the crisis time that the French people faced. However, Jules Romain did not shy away from writing articles and essays on various scientific, political and literary topics - he was known as an erudite person.

However, the novel itself was subsequently heavily criticized. The literary world did not accept the work the way the creator wanted it. The prosecution ordered this work a distorted statement of facts. Jules Romain has been criticized for misunderstanding history. Therefore, if you are ready to justify a writer, even in the 21st century, then start reading the longest book in the world.

1. Vikram Seth "A Suitable Groom"

2. Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged

3. Carl Sandburg "Stone of Memory"

4. James Clavell "Gaijin"

5. Hubbard L. Ron "Mission Earth"

6. Madison Cooper "Sironia, Texas"

7. Samuel Richardson "Clarissa, or the story of a young lady"

It seems that there are some similarities between these long novels. All books reveal topics that are very difficult to perceive, which is why the authors of these novels had to describe the events so carefully and in detail in order to convey to the reader the whole meaning of the stories.