Into the Future

David Trotter

  • BuyThe Novel: Vol. I: History, Geography and Culture edited by Franco Moretti
    Princeton, 916 pp, £65.00, June 2006, ISBN 0 691 04947 5
  • The Novel: Vol. II: Forms and Themes edited by Franco Moretti
    Princeton, 950 pp, £65.00, June 2006, ISBN 0 691 04948 3

What counts as a novel? Any ‘fictitious prose work’ over fifty thousand words was E.M. Forster’s answer, in Aspects of the Novel. It’s a broad enough definition, in all conscience, though it has begun to do some useful work by excluding a wide variety of short fiction in prose, and some long poems, such as Eugene Onegin or Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate, which are not quite prepared to admit to being long poems. But it may be too broad.

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