The book is 1856 meters long

When asking which book is the longest, we primarily think about word length, not physical length. Although, for example, in the city of Castello, residents created the longest book in the world - 1856 meters. It was designed in the form of a huge papyrus scroll, which was carefully wound around a pole. As a result, 11 fairy tales were included in this creation. However, even with all the merits of the authors of the above-mentioned record, they are unlikely to have devoted their entire lives to this idea. Because the length of the word itself, and sometimes “depth”, is a more labor-intensive and serious quantity.

Jules Romain

It was Jules Romain who became the author of the longest work in the world. Its length in terms of the number of printed words (it’s hard to even imagine) exceeds 2 million! And the page index itself, measuring 50 sheets in size, causes a very mixed reaction. The novel is called “People of Good Will” (Les Hommes de bonne volonte) and is composed of 27 volumes; the book was written over 14 years - from 1932 to 1946.

In the preface of his long creative marathon, the author questioned the structure of writing Balzac's masterpieces such as Proust and Roland. Because he considered the “mechanistic” idea of ​​writing multi-volume novels, where the whole is revealed through an individual personality, unacceptable. That is, Jules Romain himself, publishing his first volume back in 1932, was confident in the idea of ​​the chaotic and disorderly plot and the lives of all his characters (there were about 400 of them in “People of Good Will”).

Poverty, politics and culture

The longest book really has it all: criminality and spirituality, wealth and poverty, politics and culture. Moreover, of course, all events are supported by the ideas of history of that time. In general, the novel told about the events of 1908-1933. With this work, the author rather tried to help understand all the vicissitudes of the time of crisis 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 subjected to harsh criticism. The literary world did not accept the work the way the creator wanted. The prosecution prescribed this work as a distorted statement of facts. Jules Romain has been criticized for misunderstanding history. Therefore, if you are ready to justify the writer, even in the 21st century, then start reading the longest book in the world.

There are many records set by books. We know about the thickest and longest books, books with record-breaking circulation and the largest books in the world. Some of them are initially published with the goal of becoming the very best.

Longest books

When talking about the longest books, you can mean the length of the book in terms of duration, or you can mean its actual (physical) length.

It should be noted that it is difficult to imagine a person who would devote years of his life to creating an actually long book. Usually writers strive to convey the meaning of their work, even the longest of all, with the depth of words and thoughts.

"People of Goodwill"

For fourteen years, starting in 1932, Jules Romain wrote a novel called “People of Good Will.” It contains at least two million words. The novel was published in twenty-seven volumes. It is recognized as the longest in the world. The table of contents, which occupies as many as fifty pages, causes a very mixed reaction.

Spirituality, criminality, poverty, wealth, culture and politics can be found in the novel. In twenty-seven volumes, the author described the lives of four hundred heroes, touching on events from 1908 to 1933. Unfortunately, the literary world did not accept this work quite as the author desired. After the publication of the novel, it was subjected to severe criticism. The idea was expressed that the author distorted the events of that time, misunderstanding history.

"Fantastic"

The length of the book with the title “Fantastic” is one kilometer, eight hundred and fifty-six meters. This is the longest (physically) book in the world. It was created by four hundred people from the educational city of Castello. This “experiment” also involved the center’s teachers and even the families of all the participants.

The book was made from papyrus and wound around a pole. The record was registered by one of the notaries of the city of Castello. It includes eleven fairy tales, the main idea of ​​which is poverty and wealth.

The thickest books

There are several record-thick books. One of them is WIKIPEDIA, which is articles from the Internet collected in one printed publication. There is an assumption that this collection of articles was published only so that the book of five thousand pages would be included in the Guinness Book of Records. It is doubtful that such a thick book can be read - it is completely impractical to use.

Another record-breaking book is the world's thickest edition about Miss Marple, printed in the form of a complete collection of works. The works of Agatha Christie, collected in one book, fit on four thousand thirty-two pages. The spine width of this edition is three hundred and twenty-two millimeters, and the weight is eight kilograms. Despite the fact that such a gigantic book is most likely unsuitable for reading, it was published in the amount of five hundred copies.

Books with the largest circulation

It is not for nothing that the Bible is called the book of books. It has been republished many times in all countries of our planet. Its popularity not only does not fall, but continues to increase. To date, the number of published copies of this book is approximately six billion.

Another book whose circulation can easily be called one of the largest is Mao Zedong’s quotation book. Its circulation is one billion copies. Usually this book is published with a red cover, for which in Western countries the quotation book is often called the “Little Red Book”.

John Tolkien's book, written in the fantasy genre, The Lord of the Rings, which is in third place, lags significantly behind in terms of circulation. Its circulation is one hundred million copies. The circulation of a book called “The American Spelling Book” and the “Guinness Book of Records”, which are in fourth and fifth place in the ranking of books with the largest circulation, are approximately the same.

Sixth place in the ranking is occupied by the World Yearbook with a circulation of eighty million copies, and seventh place by the McGuffey Anthology of Children's Reading. The circulation of this book is sixty million copies. The book “Basics of Child Care” was published in a circulation of fifty million copies. “The Da Vinci Code” took ninth place in the rating with a circulation of forty-three million, and in tenth place of honor is the work of Elbert Hubbard with a circulation of forty million. Its title is “Message to Garcia.”

The largest book in the world

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world's largest printed book is A Giant Visual Odyssey Through the Kingdom of Bhutan. The dimensions of its pages are one hundred and fifty-two by two hundred and thirteen centimeters. The total weight of this book, consisting of one hundred and twelve pages, is almost sixty kilograms. Today, only eleven copies of it have been created.

To print one book, you need to spend a roll of paper, the length of which is comparable to the length of a football field. The technology for printing this book was invented and developed by Michael Hawley, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anyone can order the book by paying thirty thousand dollars.

We know about the “Superbook”, which was published in Denver in 1976. Its dimensions are three hundred seven by two hundred seventy-four centimeters and weighs almost two hundred fifty-three kilograms. In 2004, in Russia, the publishing house “In” set a new record, namely, the book “The Biggest Book for Kids” was published. Its dimensions can amaze anyone - six by three meters with a weight of four hundred and ninety-two kilograms. It is difficult to imagine such a book, because the area of ​​each page is equal, no more or less - eighteen square meters.

There are other amazing books. For example, the most expensive volume of poetry was the publication of Edgar Allan Poe’s book “Tamerlane and Other Poems.” .
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“Tokugawa Ieyasu” by the Japanese writer Sohachi Yamaoka - about 40 volumes in book version. Yes, I decided not to make a secret to which the reader would have to wade through the jungle of various information and comments, and immediately named the winner. Those who are interested in nuances and terminological subtleties are welcome to the following study.

When talking about the longest novel, we, of course, first of all think about volume. And the question of how to calculate the length of a work seems naive at first glance. We can copy the text of a work in electronic form and see how many words or symbols appear in it. But the very mention of the Japanese author leads to the common observation that in languages ​​with hieroglyphic graphics, one character is one word. This means that the text in Japanese will contain fewer characters than its translation, for example, into Russian. But in the paper version, both options can be approximately the same due to the size of the hieroglyphs, which are usually printed larger than the letters.

The book version is a completely separate issue. Some publications fit “War and Peace” into one book, and others into two. The number of pages may also vary due to different fonts and sheet sizes. But the twice-mentioned Sohachi Yamaoka seems to be hinting that truly long novels run into dozens of volumes.

Question 2. What is a novel?

This would also seem to be a ridiculous question. We all intuitively understand that Crime and Punishment and The Master and Margarita are novels. And that “Eugene Onegin” is also a novel, in verse. But “The Horse's Name” is a story. And the point here is not only in volume, but also in the essential features of the novel that distinguish it from other prose forms: the presence of several plot lines, a certain number of main and minor characters, etc.

By the way, regarding length, in the history of literature there is an example of a very long work that is technically a story. "Ulysses" by the Irish writer James Joyce stretches to almost a thousand pages, but it has one plot line and one main character - Leopold Bloom, so it is still a story.

But another nuance is more important for us. Can we consider a novel a work in which new adventures happen to the main characters in each chapter? The film adaptation of “The Idiot” in ten episodes is a multi-part film. And “Secrets of the Investigation” is a series. I think the cinematic analogy is clear. Can we consider the stories of Don Quixote and Sancho Panzo a novel or is it a collection of stories compiled into one book? I hope it will now be more clear that the terminological research is given for a reason.

"Tokugawa Ieyasu"

Let's finally figure out our winner, especially since he belongs to the category of never-ending stories brought together. You are unlikely to find the novel “Tokugawa Ieyasu” by the Japanese writer Sohachi Yamaoka in a bookstore. The thing is that this work can only conditionally be called a novel. Yamaoka published chapters of his work in a daily newspaper starting in 1951. No one carried out a special publication. However, it is understandable: it’s no joke, if all the parts of the work are combined together, you will get a hefty 40-volume publication.

There are hardly a dozen people in the world who have read the novel from beginning to end. But we know the name of the main character - he is the first shogun from the Tokugawa clan, who united the land of the rising sun and established peace in it.

Yamaoka's novel was published in a separate edition, and before that it was distributed in many issues of Japanese newspapers, which is why it can deservedly be called published twice. The novel by the American writer Henry Darger, “The Story of Vivian Girls,” was not only never published, but it was found after the author’s death. In the novel, the Earth is only a satellite of another, larger planet, and the plot describes the military resistance of child slaves to cruel enslavers. Of course, you are intrigued and want to know the volume of the work. The answer is: 10 weighty volumes, which in total contain more than 15 thousand pages! No one has yet counted the number of words, but scientists suggest that there are about 10 million.

"People of Goodwill"

Let's move on to published novels that you can get, open and read. Even if not in Russian. The record holder here is the French writer Romain Jules (real name Louis Henri Jean Farigul). He set the task of understanding in detail the reasons for the troubles of the inhabitants of France over a quarter of a century, from 1908 to 1933. The result turned out to be large-scale - 27 volumes, occupying 5 thousand pages. The table of contents alone spans 50 pages!

Interestingly, People of Goodwill was translated into English. Publishing house “Peter Davis” published the novel in 14, even more weighty, volumes. The word count in both cases exceeds 2 million.

"Astraea"

A novel by another French writer, Honoré d'Urfe, 21 years in the making, was also published. In addition, its volume is even larger: the love story of the shepherdess Astraea and the shepherd Celadon is 5,400 pages. However, we mention “Astrea” after Romain Jules because the publication dates back to 1607 and today this novel is unlikely to be available in its entirety. But you can read the dissertation of candidate of philological sciences Tatyana Kozhanova “The problem of the comic in Honore d’Urfe’s novel “Astrea”” (Moscow, 2005).

"In Search of Lost Time"

Not a novel, but a whole cycle of 7 novels - “In Search of Lost Time” by another Frenchman, the sophisticated Marcel Proust, is only slightly inferior to “Men of Good Will”: 3200 pages and 1.5 million words. If instead of working you read for 8 hours a day at a speed of, say, 40 pages per hour (that is, 320 pages daily), then reading the Proustian cycle will take you 10 working days, or 2 calendar weeks. If you read 40 pages a day with Saturday and Sunday off, then In Search of Lost Time will take you 4 months.

Graphomaniac outsiders

May the titans of literature forgive me the sports term, but writers whom we considered incredible graphomaniacs find themselves, if not at the bottom, then somewhere in the middle of the impromptu table of the longest novels. If we talk about Russian writers, it turns out that the first one that comes to mind, “War and Peace,” is by no means the leader of the list. The work of Count Tolstoy contains about 1,400 pages of the modern edition. While “Quiet Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov takes 1500 pages. The researchers also calculated that there are 982 characters in the Nobel laureate’s novel, of which 363 are real historical figures.

But we also had authors who decided to write multi-volume epic descriptions. Most of them are unlikely to be heard by the modern reader. So, for example, the writer Georgy Grebenshchikov will be recognized by his last name. Being under the significant influence of Roerich, who managed to paint 7 thousand canvases during his life, the musician’s namesake wrote an epic novel in 12 parts, “The Churaevs,” published in Paris and New York in 1937.

Morality

Services have recently appeared on the Internet where you can challenge yourself with a literary challenge: I will read so many books this year. And you need to indicate the number yourself. To check after a year whether you coped with the word given to you.

Finding out the longest novel is, of course, good, interesting and entertaining. But don’t forget that in life quality can be more important than size. For example, at my parents’ house I came across a 12-volume collected works of F. M. Dostoevsky, which I bought as a student, as it turned out from the surviving receipt - on July 3, 2004. The collection includes all works by Fyodor Mikhailovich of large and medium form. Having devoured the first volume, I thought it would be nice to finally fulfill my student dream of reading all of Dostoevsky. I don’t take on any obligations, because you shouldn’t give your words if you can’t keep them. But, God willing, I will read for myself much more than the longest novel - the great writer embodied in his novels!

In conclusion, I urge you to devote at least 20 minutes a day to a book, and you will remember what an indescribable pleasure it is to read.

The mention of L. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" somehow immediately brought back memories of reading it during my school years. Few people have mastered this work, grandiose in its scope and design. Many people thought that four volumes was simply too much. Naturally, I wanted to look to see if there were larger works, so to speak. And, of course, there were some.

Japanese chronicler Sohachi Yamaoka's novel Tokugawa Ieyasu has been serialized in Japanese daily newspapers since 1951. Today, the novel "Tokugawa Ieyasu" is completed, and if it is republished in its entirety, it will be a 40-volume edition. It is unknown whether this will ever happen, but the fact remains a fact! The novel tells the story of 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 considered to be the novel “People of Good Will” by the French writer, poet and playwright, member of the French Academy Romain Jules (real name Louis Henri Jean Farigul). "People of Goodwill" is a full-fledged publication that can be purchased and read sequentially. It was published in twenty-seven volumes from 1932 to 1946. It is estimated that the novel was 4,959 pages long and contained approximately 2,070,000 words (not counting the 100-page index and 50-page table of contents). By comparison, the Bible has about 773,700 words.

In the novel “People of Good Will,” Jules tried, from the point of view of his right-wing views, to understand and explain the historical processes that took place in France in the thirties. The prose essay was supposed to express in all its diversity and minute detail the author’s picture of the contemporary world.

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

In the preface of his long creative marathon, the author questioned the structure of writing Balzac's masterpieces such as Proust and Roland. Because he considered the “mechanistic” idea of ​​writing multi-volume novels, where the whole is revealed through an individual personality, unacceptable. That is, Jules Romain himself, publishing his first volume back in 1932, was confident in the idea of ​​the chaotic and disorderly plot and the lives of all his characters (and as already said, there were about 400 of them in “People of Good Will”).

The longest book really has it all: criminality and spirituality, wealth and poverty, politics and culture. Moreover, of course, all events are supported by the ideas of history of that time. In general, the novel told about the events of 1908-1933. With this work, the author rather tried to help understand all the vicissitudes of the time of crisis 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 subjected to harsh criticism. The literary world did not accept the work the way the creator wanted. The prosecution prescribed this work as a distorted statement of facts. Jules Romain has been criticized for misunderstanding history. Therefore, if you are ready to justify the writer, even in the 21st century, then start reading the longest book in the world.

(estimates: 35 , average: 4,34 out of 5)

In Russia, literature has its own direction, different from any other. The Russian soul is mysterious and incomprehensible. The genre reflects both Europe and Asia, which is why the best classical Russian works are extraordinary, striking in their soulfulness and vitality.

The main character is the soul. For a person, his position in society, the amount of money is not important, it is important for him to find himself and his place in this life, to find the truth and peace of mind.

The books of Russian literature are united by the features of a writer who has the gift of the great Word, who has completely devoted himself to this art of literature. The best classics saw life not flatly, but multifacetedly. They wrote about life not of random destinies, but of those expressing existence in its most unique manifestations.

Russian classics are so different, with different destinies, but what unites them is that literature is recognized as a school of life, a way of studying and developing Russia.

Russian classical literature was created by the best writers from different parts of Russia. It is very important where the author was born, because this determines his formation as a person, his development, and it also affects his writing skills. Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky were born in Moscow, Chernyshevsky in Saratov, Shchedrin in Tver. Poltava region in Ukraine is the birthplace of Gogol, Podolsk province - Nekrasov, Taganrog - Chekhov.

The three great classics, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Dostoevsky, were completely different people from each other, had different destinies, complex characters and great talents. They made a huge contribution to the development of literature, writing their best works, which still excite the hearts and souls of readers. Everyone should read these books.

Another important difference between the books of Russian classics is that they ridicule the shortcomings of a person and his way of life. Satire and humor are the main features of the works. However, many critics said that this was all slander. And only true connoisseurs saw how the characters are both comical and tragic at the same time. Such books always touch the soul.

Here you can find the best works of classical literature. You can download books of Russian classics for free or read them online, which is very convenient.

We present to your attention the 100 best books of Russian classics. The full list of books includes the best and most memorable works of Russian writers. This literature is known to everyone and is recognized by critics from all over the world.

Of course, our list of top 100 books is just a small part that brings together the best works of the great classics. It can be continued for a very long time.

A hundred books that everyone should read in order to understand not only how they used to live, what were the values, traditions, priorities in life, what they were striving for, but to find out in general how our world works, how bright and pure the soul can be and how valuable it is for a person, for the development of his personality.

The top 100 list includes the best and most famous works of Russian classics. The plot of many of them is known from school. However, some books are difficult to understand at a young age and require wisdom that is acquired over the years.

Of course, the list is far from complete; it can be continued endlessly. Reading such literature is a pleasure. She doesn’t just teach something, she radically changes lives, helps us understand simple things that we sometimes don’t even notice.

We hope you liked our list of classic books of Russian literature. You may have already read some of it, and some not. A great reason to make your own personal list of books, your top ones that you would like to read.