Fifty Favorite Novellas

(A form whose borders are in dispute, so this list overlaps somewhat not only with my fifty favorite short stories but my twenty favorite very short novels. I’ve arranged my choices alphabetically by author, and restricted myself to one book per writer.)

 

  1. “The Literary Conference” by César Aira

  2. “Believers” by Charles Baxter

  3. “In Calabria” by Peter S. Beagle

  4. “Mouchette” by Georges Bernanos

  5. “The Other Side of the Mountain” by Michel Bernanos

  6. “Last Word” by Jonathan Blum

  7. “The Lady in White” by Christian Bobin

  8. “Welcome to America” by Linda Boström Knausgård

  9. “The Cloven Viscount” by Italo Calvino

  10. “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” by Ted Chiang

  11. “Great Work of Time” by John Crowley

  12. “Springtime: A Ghost Story” by Michelle de Kretser

  13. “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals” by Samuel R. Delany

  14. “Yesterday” by Juan Emar

  15. “Bear” by Marian Engel

  16. “Scenes from a Childhood” by Jon Fosse

  17. “This Is Pleasure” by Mary Gaitskill

  18. “Ellis Island” by Mark Helprin

  19. “Too Loud a Solitude” by Bohumil Hrabal

  20. “A Single Man” by Christopher Isherwood

  21. “Sweet Days of Discipline” by Fleur Jaeggy

  22. “Train Dreams” by Denis Johnson

  23. “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka

  24. “The Room” by Jonas Karlsson

  25. “Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel

  26. “Being There” by Jerzy Kosinski

  27. “Magic for Beginners” by Kelly Link

  28. “A River Runs Through It” by Norman Maclean

  29. “Disquisition on the Difficulty of Communicating with the Dead” by Giorgio Manganelli

  30. “Sandkings” by George R. R. Martin

  31. “So Long, See You Tomorrow” by William Maxwell

  32. “Penny, n.” by Madeline McDonnell

  33. “Behold the Man” by Michael Moorcock

  34. “The Character of Rain” by Amélie Nothomb

  35. “Remote Control” by Nnedi Okarafor

  36. “Pobby and Dingan” by Ben Rice

  37. “Goodbye, Columbus” by Philip Roth

  38. “Sleep Donation” by Karen Russell

  39. “The Wishing Table” by Anne Serre

  40. “The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter” by Lucius Shepard

  41. “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” by Muriel Spark

  42. “Baby is Three” by Theodore Sturgeon

  43. “The Death of Ivan Ilych” by Leo Tolstoy

  44. “We the Animals” by Justin Torres

  45. “Extracts from Adam’s Diary and Eve’s Diary” by Mark Twain

  46. “The Persistence of Vision” by John Varley

  47. “Down the Rabbit Hole” by Juan Pablo Villalobos

  48. “Miss Lonelyhearts” by Nathanael West

  49. “The Private Lives of Trees” by Alejandro Zambra

  50. “Chess Story” by Stefan Zweig

— May 17, 2022


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