Portal:Novels
The Novels Portal
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The English word to describe such a work derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story (of something new)", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance". M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, while the romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Such "romances" should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love.
Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as the world's first novel, because of its early use of the experience of intimacy in a narrative form. There is considerable debate over this, however, as there were certainly long fictional prose works that preceded it. The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of classical Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain. Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era. Literary historian Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century.
Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes audio books, web novels, and ebooks. Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in graphic novels. While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in the 19th century, they have only become popular recently. (Full article...)
El Señor Presidente is a 1946 novel by Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias. A landmark text in Latin American literature, El Señor Presidente explores the nature of political dictatorship and its effects on society. Asturias also makes early use of a literary technique that would come to be known as magic realism. One of the most notable works of the dictator novel genre, El Señor Presidente developed from an earlier Asturias short story, written to protest social injustice in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in the author's home town. Although El Señor Presidente does not explicitly identify its setting as early twentieth-century Guatemala, the novel's title character was inspired by the 1898–1920 presidency of Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Asturias began writing the novel in the 1920s and finished it in 1933, but the strict censorship policies of Guatemalan dictatorial governments delayed its publication for a further thirteen years. The character the President rarely appears in the story but Asturias creates a number of other characters to show the terrible effects of living under a dictatorship. The style of El Señor Presidente influenced a generation of Latin American authors. In 1967, Asturias received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his entire body of work. This international acknowledgment was celebrated throughout Latin America, where it was seen as a recognition of the region's literature as a whole. Since then, El Señor Presidente has been adapted for the screen three times.
Selected novel quote
- "You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like — "
"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."
She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.
"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
Did you know...
- ...that Chinua Achebe's novel A Man of the People described a coup d'état so similar to the real circumstances of Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi's rise to power in Nigeria that Achebe was suspected of knowing about the coup in advance?
- ...that the 1923 children's novel King Matt the First is as popular in Poland as Peter Pan is in the English-speaking world?
- ...that the Finnish novel Puhdistus (Purge) by Sofi Oksanen has won awards in Finland and France but had mixed reviews in Estonia, where the story takes place?
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Featured articles
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Featured lists
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- Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
- Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel
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- Winston Churchill as writer
- Roald Dahl bibliography
- Len Deighton bibliography
- Arthur Conan Doyle bibliography
- The Flashman Papers
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- Hugo Award for Best Novel
- Hugo Award for Best Novelette
- Hugo Award for Best Novella
- Hugo Award for Best Short Story
- List of James Bond novels and short stories
- John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
- List of works by W. E. Johns
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- Lambda Literary Award for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror
- List of awards and nominations received by J. K. Rowling
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- List of works by H. C. McNeile
- Nebula Award for Best Novella
- Nebula Award for Best Novel
- Newbery Medal
- List of Nobel laureates in Literature
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- Theodore Sturgeon Award
- P. G. Wodehouse bibliography
- World Fantasy Award—Anthology
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- World Fantasy Award—Novella
- World Fantasy Award—Novel
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- File:Archibald Standish Hartrick - Rudyard Kipling - Soldier Tales 18 - The Taking of Lungtungpen 1.jpg
- File:Archibald Standish Hartrick - Rudyard Kipling - Soldier Tales 19 - The Taking of Lungtungpen 2.jpg
- File:Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, Graziella, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg
- File:N. M. Price - Sir Walter Scott - Guy Mannering - At the Kaim of Derncleugh.jpg
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