Some shorter classic novels?

[hot4jwg]

I'm looking for some of the shortest novels other than Animal Farm or 1984. Can you name some?

[Veho]

From what era would you prefer the suggestions?

[Barbarous]

Heart of Darkness by Conrad
Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe
As I Lay Dying by Faulkner
Mrs.Dalloway by Woolf
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Candide by Voltaire
Siddhartha by Hesse
Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce
Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde by Stevenson
Seize the Day by Bellow

[MTA]

On The Road by Kerouac
Lolita by Nabokov


And I second the Conrad/Faulkner rec.

[bluosean]

Heart of Darkness is a good choice. I also liked As I Lay Dying. I guess that is three. I would only add The Great Gatsby which is so good that it goes by fast, and A Christmas Caroll. The first is by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the second by Charles Dickens.

[Adagio]

A few that haven't been mentioned:

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde
Fathers and Sons - Turgenev
Thérèse Raquin - Zola
Frankenstein - Shelley
The Bell Jar - Plath
Howards End - Forster

[prendrelemick]

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. (yes, there is a short Dickens out there.)

[Dark Muse]

A Room With A View by E.M Forester
Day of the Locust by Nathanael West,
The Stranger by Camus
The Fall by Camus
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Scarlett Letter by Hawthorne
The Sun Also Rises by Hemmingway
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

[Veho]

Silas Marner - George Eliot
Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
Daisy Miller - Henry James
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

[NotWoodhouse]

How short or a novel do you want?

[crystalmoonshin]

Voltaire's "Zadig"

[mal4mac]

Is 1984 a short novel? Tolstoy authored several short novels closer to Animal Farm length, I just read eight of them packed into one doorstop of a book, including, "The Cossacks", "The Death of Ivan Illych", & several other really good reads...

[cidkid]

What was that package called?

[promtbr]

From the category of World Lit in translation--Post WWII Classics:

Too Loud a Solitude-- Bohumil Hrabal

Closely Watched Trains-- Bohumil Hrabal

A Chess Story-- Stefan Zweig

The above are just over 100 pages in length.

Depending on what your idea is of 'Shortest' novels...many of those awesome novels posted above are definitely more in the 200+ page category..Lolita, Mrs Dalloway, Portrait of the Artist, Howard's End, Hunger, Fathers and Sons, and Madame Bovary for example would never occur to me to call them short novels.

just sayin'....


Do you mean novellas? All the Tolstoy novella suggestions are amazing literature!


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[mal4mac]

cidkid asked for the Tolstoy reference:

"Great Short Works" of Leo Tolstoy, Harper Collins. (Maude translation) in a very inexpensive, but slightly pulpy, paperback. Everyman have a (relatively!) inexpensive two volume hardback edition with these works + much more - excepting "the Cossacks", they have that in a separate volume (and it's not to be missed!)

Actually, only "The Cossacks" and "Hadji Murad" have more than 100 pages. "The Cossacks" is a great one to start with.

[David R]

Here's one I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet:

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

[Manchegan]

Other than Heart of Darkness, my two fav shorties are Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, and The Metamorphosis by the Kafka. Surprised those weren't already mentioned.

[mmmmmm]

The Red Pony, The Pearl--both by Steinbeck.
Franny and Zooey is pretty short, by Salinger
A lot of plays are pretty short and not hard to get through.
Little Prince, Saint Exupery
and of course Breakfast at Tiffany's.

[Mathor]

All of H.G. Wells' works are pretty short.

[applepie]

The Fall of the House of Usher - Poe
There are also a few sets of his short stories that you can pick up. I've always favored The Black Cat.

[mona amon]

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

[mono]

Many have already mentioned some great recommendations, some I had previously thought of, others not. A few more I would like to add:
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
anything by Albert Camus (a few already received some mentions)
Dubliners by James Joyce

[promtbr]

Two 'Writer's writer' Novellas;

The Duel-- Anton Chekhov

The Pederson Kid-- William H. Gass


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[toni]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Hard Times - Charles Dickens

[mal4mac]

Dubliners by James Joyce

That's not a novel, it's a (very good!) collection of short stories.

[mono]

That's not a novel, it's a (very good!) collection of short stories.
Indeed, thanks - I figured if others suggested such things as "The Fall of the House of Usher" (also a short story), I could suggest a collection of short stories, which all seem to bear a resemblance of Dublin residents during Joyce's time; plot-wise, however, I realize, they have few similarities.

[Mariamosis]

'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'The Old Curiousity Shop' are fairly short for Dickens