100 Greatest Novellas (Revision Version)

[Brian]

Criteria: A novella is a short novel, for this list defined as one with a length of 17,500-40,000 words. The novellas are ranked primarily by their long-term acclaim and popularity, with their influence and historical importance as a secondary consideration.

Editor: Brian

1. The Stranger by Albert Camus
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell
4. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
5. The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
6. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
7. Candide by Voltaire
8. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
9. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
10. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
11. Death of Ivan Illyich by Leo Tolstoy
12. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
13. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
14. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
15. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
16. The Sorrows of Young Werther by J. W. von Goethe
17. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
18. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
19. Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
20. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
21. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
22. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
23. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
24. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
25. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
26. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson
27. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur C. Doyle
28. The Lover by Marguerite Duras
29. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
30. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
31. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
32. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
33. The Fall by Albert Camus
34. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
35. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
36. Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
37. The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun
38. Passing by Nella Larsen
39. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
40. Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
41. Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville
42. At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft
43. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
44. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
45. The Royal Game (Chess Story) by Stefan Zweig
46. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
47. The Enchanted Wanderer by Nikolai Leskov
48. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
49. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
50. Daisy Miller by Henry James
51. The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy
52. The Immoralist by André Gide
53. The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
54. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
55. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
56. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
57. Carmen by Prosper Mérimée
58. Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
59. The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers
60. The Third Man by Graham Greene
61. No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
62. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
63. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll
64. Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
65. Quicksand by Nella Larsen
66. Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
67. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
68. The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
69. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
70. Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg
71. Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal
72. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
73. Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
74. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
75. A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
76. Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
77. The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
78. The Captain's Daughter by Alexander Pushkin
79. Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist
80. The Pearl by John Steinbeck
81. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
82. First Love by Ivan Turgenev
83. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
84. Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing by Joseph von Eichendorff
85. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
86. Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
87. The Abbot C by Georges Bataille
88. Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille
89. The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf
90. Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass
91. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
92. Rhapsody: A Dream Novel (Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler
93. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
94. Anthem by Ayn Rand
95. The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
96. Shopgirl by Steve Martin
97. The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns
98. Amok by Stefan Zweig
99. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
100. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov

[Brian]

Here are 4 more that I had enough doubt about them being the right length that I left them off the list, but probably would make the list if they're the right length:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Bear by Marian Engel
Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang

Here are 5 that are the right length and worthy, but I thought fell just short of deserving to make the list:

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
King Lear of the Steppes by Ivan Turgenev
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis

I encourage everyone to check the list for errors, and also let me know whether the meaning of the last 2 sentences of the criteria is clear.

[pauldrach]

and also let me know whether the meaning of the last 2 sentences of the criteria is clear.

Sounds as if some of these works were more deliberately written in the literary tradition of the novella (whatever that is) or at least critically reviewed as such, while others are more incidentally novellas because they just so happen to fit the criteria you used to define that term. I don't know whether that's what you mean.

Cool list though!

[Fido]

They are kinda confusing, maybe to an uninitiated like me. If it's a novella, how would it be acclaimed as anything else? Or why would its acclaim as a general work of literature be different?

[Brian]

What I'm trying to say in a brief manner is that in researching the list I would look up greatest novellas, the consensus would seem to be one thing, but when looking up greatest works of literature and picking out the novellas from that list, they would tend to be ranked a little differently. For example, Animal Farm seemed to be the most acclaimed on the novella lists, but on overall works of literature lists, The Stranger, Heart of Darkness, tended to be ahead of it while The Old Man and the Sea, The Little Prince, and Candide were about the same.

[pauldrach]

Doesn't seem very relevant. I'd scrap that part entirely.

[Brian]

I will scrap it. It creates unnecessary confusion. I'll quote the 2 sentences below so that those reading this thread in the future will know what the discussion was about:

"Sometimes one book may be more acclaimed as a novella while another may be more acclaimed as a general work of literature. This list intends to strike a balance between those two approaches."