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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...)

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Diamonds Are Forever is the fourth novel by the British author Ian Fleming to feature his fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond. Fleming wrote the story at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, inspired by a Sunday Times article on diamond smuggling. The book was first published by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom on 26 March 1956.

The story centres on Bond's investigation of a diamond-smuggling operation that originates in the mines of Sierra Leone and runs to Las Vegas. Along the way Bond meets and falls in love with one of the members of the smuggling gang, Tiffany Case. Much of Fleming's background research formed the basis for his non-fiction 1957 book The Diamond Smugglers. Diamonds Are Forever deals with international travel, marriage and the transitory nature of life. (Full article...)

Selected novel quote

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you have got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

Shantaram

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Did you know...

...that Edgar Allan Poe satirized the concept of a self-made man in his story "The Business Man" using a character that makes his fortune cutting the tails off cats?
...that a description of the Battle of Aspern-Essling written by Patrick Rambaud as The Battle was originally a project of Honoré de Balzac?
...that the Iceberg Theory refers to Ernest Hemingway's (pictured) distinctive writing style?

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General images

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

Image 1"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 2A 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 3The frontispiece of a late 18th-century chapbook edition of Voltaire's The Extraordinary Tragical Fate of Calas, depicting Jean Calas being broken on the wheel (from Chapbook)
Image 4Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) (from Novel)
Image 51719 newspaper reprint of Robinson Crusoe (from Novel)
Image 6Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1741) (from Novel)
Image 7J. K. Rowling, 2010 (from Novel)
Image 8One of the most influential novels on the picaresque genre was The Golden Ass by Apuleius, which he published sometime in the 2nd century AD. (ms. Vat. Lat. 2194, Vatican Library) (1345 illustration). (from Picaresque novel)
Image 9Image from a Victorian edition of Walter Scott's Waverley (1814) (from Novel)
Image 101474: 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 111915 novelization of the original 1904 play Peter and Wendy (from Novelization)
Image 12Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladivostok, 1995 (from Novel)
Image 13First edition of Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers (1870) (from Novel)
Image 14Woodcut of a fairy-circle from a 17th-century chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 15Paper as the essential carrier: Murasaki Shikibu writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction (from Novel)
Image 16Novelization of chapter 8 of the film series Les Vampires (1915–16) (from Novelization)
Image 17Chaucer reciting Troilus and Criseyde: early-15th-century manuscript of the work at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (from Novel)
Image 18Madame de Pompadour spending her afternoon with a book (François Boucher, 1756) (from Novel)
Image 19King Kong (1932) novelization of King Kong (1933) (from Novelization)
Image 20Chinua Achebe, Buffalo, 2008 (from Novel)
Image 21Harlequin novels (from Romance novel)
Image 22The chapbook Jack the Giant Killer (from Chapbook)
Image 23Adventure novels and short stories were popular subjects for American pulp magazines. (from Adventure fiction)
Image 24Statue of Ostap Bender in Elista (from Picaresque novel)
Image 25Dan Brown (from Novel)
Image 26Intimate short stories: The Court and City Vagaries (1711). (from Novel)
Image 27Richard Head, The English Rogue (1665) (from Novel)
Image 28The picaresque genre began with the Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) (Pictured: Its title page) (from Picaresque novel)
Image 29A light novel bookstore in Macau (from Light novel)
Image 30A modern chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 31Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol.6, pp. 70–71 (1769) (from Novel)

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