A few weeks ago the online version of The Times ran an article describing a publishing company’s plans to release new editions of classic works of literature, minus a few hundred pages of prose. According to the Orion Group, publishers of the new Compact Editions series, classics such as Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, and Moby Dick will go under the knife, with their total page count reduced to around 400 pages. While the majority of new novels published these days are significantly shorter than these hefty tomes, there are some authors who continue to produce extremely long novels. Here are eight novels, all published within the last fifteen years, whose page counts (in their original hardcover version) exceed a whopping 700 pages.
- A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe: 744 pages
- Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon: 784 pages
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke: 800 pages
- Europe Central by William T. Vollmann: 832 pages
- Until I Find You by John Irving: 848 pages
- Les Bienveillantes by Jonathan Littell: 912 pages
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace: 1088 pages
- A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth: 1349 pages
