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A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction 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". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels.

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, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some, including 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 The Lord of the Rings, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Frankenstein. "Romances" are works of fiction whose main emphasis is on marvellous or unusual incidents, and should not be confused with the romance novel, a type of genre fiction that focuses on romantic love. (Full article...)

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The General in His Labyrinth is a novel by the Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. It is a fictionalized account of the last days of Simón Bolívar, liberator and leader of Gran Colombia. First published in 1989, the book traces Bolívar's final journey from Bogotá to the Caribbean coastline of Colombia in his attempt to leave South America for exile in Europe. In this dictator novel about a continental hero, "despair, sickness, and death inevitably win out over love, health, and life". Breaking with the traditional heroic portrayal of Bolívar El Libertador, García Márquez depicts a pathetic protagonist, a prematurely aged man who is physically ill and mentally exhausted. The story explores the labyrinth of Bolívar's life through the narrative of his memories. Its mixture of genres makes The General in His Labyrinth difficult to classify, and commentators disagree over where it lies on the scale between novel and historical account. García Márquez's insertion of interpretive and fictionalized elements—some dealing with Bolívar's most intimate moments—caused outrage in parts of Latin America when the book was released. Many prominent Latin American figures believed that the novel damaged the reputation of one of the region's most important historic figures and portrayed a negative image to the outside world.

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'You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Alice said with some severity; 'it's very rude.'
The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, 'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'
'Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. 'I'm glad they've begun asking riddles. — I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.
'Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March Hare.
'Exactly so,' said Alice.
'Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on.
'I do,' Alice hastily replied; 'at least — at least I mean what I say — that's the same thing, you know.'
'Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. 'You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!'
'You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, 'that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!'
'You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, 'that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!'
'It is the same thing with you,' said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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...that Kurt Vonnegut's short story 2BR02B is mentioned in his later book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, where it is attributed to Vonnegut's fictional alter ego Kilgore Trout?
...that My Brother, My Executioner, a 1970s novel by F. Sionil José, is a narrative about two half-brothers with opposing Filipino ideologies?
...that children's novel Nordy Bank by Sheena Porter, set in Nordy Bank on Brown Clee Hill, Shropshire, was awarded the 1964 Carnegie Medal in Literature?

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General images

The following are images from various novel-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Novelization of chapter 8 of the film series Les Vampires (1915–16). (from Novelization)
Image 2Intimate short stories: The Court and City Vagaries (1711). (from Novel)
Image 3One of the first and most influential pre-modern picaresque novels was the Golden Ass of Apuleius, which he published sometime in the 2nd century CE. (ms. Vat. Lat. 2194, Vatican Library) (1345 illustration). (from Picaresque novel)
Image 4"Oh Edward! How can you?", a late-19th-century illustration from Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen, a pioneer of the genre (from Romance novel)
Image 5Dan Brown (from Novel)
Image 6Chinua Achebe, Buffalo, 2008 (from Novel)
Image 7J. K. Rowling, 2010 (from Novel)
Image 8Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol.6, pp. 70–71 (1769) (from Novel)
Image 9Woodcut of a fairy-circle from a 17th-century chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 10Paper as the essential carrier: Murasaki Shikibu writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction (from Novel)
Image 11King Kong (1932) novelization of King Kong (1933) (from Novelization)
Image 12Richard Head, The English Rogue (1665) (from Novel)
Image 13Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) (from Novel)
Image 14Harlequin novels (from Romance novel)
Image 15Adventure novels and short stories were popular subjects for American pulp magazines. (from Adventure fiction)
Image 16Image from a Victorian edition of Walter Scott's Waverley (1814) (from Novel)
Image 171719 newspaper reprint of Robinson Crusoe (from Novel)
Image 18Madame de Pompadour spending her afternoon with a book (François Boucher, 1756) (from Novel)
Image 19First edition of Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers (1870) (from Novel)
Image 20Chapbook frontispiece of Voltaire's The Extraordinary Tragical Fate of Calas, showing a man being tortured on a breaking wheel, late 18th century (from Chapbook)
Image 21Statue of Ostap Bender in Elista (from Picaresque novel)
Image 22The modern picaresque began with the Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) (title page) (from Picaresque novel)
Image 231915 novelization of the original 1904 play Peter and Wendy (from Novelization)
Image 24A nineteenth-century painting by the Swiss-French painter Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre depicting a scene from Longus's Daphnis and Chloe (from Romance novel)
Image 25The chapbook Jack the Giant Killer (from Chapbook)
Image 261474: The customer in the copyist's shop with a book he wants to have copied. This illustration of the first printed German Melusine looked back to the market of manuscripts. (from Novel)
Image 27Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1741) (from Novel)
Image 28A modern-day chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 29A light novel bookstore in Macau (from Light novel)
Image 30Chaucer reciting Troilus and Criseyde: early-15th-century manuscript of the work at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (from Novel)
Image 31Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladivostok, 1995 (from Novel)

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