Long read

[silver]

What is the longest fiction book ever written?

[Ginbottle]

Is that 'War and Peace', or a trilogy by J.R. Tolkein?

[Waterwolf]

The single-volume edition of 'Lord of the Rings' is 1150 pages long. 'War and Peace' weighs in at nearly 1400 pages (varies between editions), so that is probably the longest work of fiction in a single volume. However...

[Waterwolf]

If we include works which are continuous stories, but printed in multiple volumes, there are many other candidates. The longest of these will probably be Robert Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' sequence which currently runs to ten volumes of about 700 pages (sometimes more) each! But it isn't finished yet. The longest complete multi-volume sequence I can think of is 'Memory, Sorrow and Thorn' by Tad Williams, comprising 'The Dragonbone Chair', 'Stone of Farewell' and 'To Green Angel Tower' which are collectively something like 3000 pages. But there might be something longer.

[naivewesod]

The Bible, surely, or maybe the Ramayana

[noiret]

'Les hommes de bonne volonte' by Jules Romains is 28 volumes I think. 'A la recherche du temps perdu' is 7, they're fairly chunky, and Marcel Proust should get bonus points for frequently writing sentences that stretch over a page or more!

[smartrse]

Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady, by Samuel Richardson is widely regarded as the longest novel in the English language. The current edition runs to 1536 pages.