he internet has officially destroyed everyone’s attention span; so much so that

making it through a Spot The Dog book now requires a major feat of concentration.

So we dread to think how many people would be able to get through these monsters
of prose; these titans of text. We list below the ten longest, most epic novels ever
created.

Naturally, opinion is sometimes divided on how exactly to measure length - pages,

words, or even characters, so it’s an approximate guide - however, if you ever
manage to get all the way through even one of these, you have our eternal respect.

10. Ponniyin Selvan/The Son of Ponni

Author: Kalki Krishnamurthy
900,000 words/2,400 pages

Published in the 1950s and released in five volumes, this historical novel, originally written in
Tamil, tells the story of Arulmozhivarman, one of the kings of the Chola Dynasty, which ruled in
the 10th and 11th centuries. It took Krishnamurthy three years and six months to write - it would
probably take us about the same time to read it (not withstanding having to learn a new
language).

Author: Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

950,000 words/2,836 pages

A famous Persian novel, this was published in 1984 and tells the story of a Kurdish
family in Sabzevar, Khorasan who face hostility from neighbouring visitors, set
against a backdrop of the years following the Second World War; a turbulent era for
Iranian politics. It took Dowlatabadi 15 years to write: thank God people liked it or
that would have been a serious waste of time.

8. Joseph und seine Brüder/Joseph and his

Brothers
Author: Thomas Mann
1,492 pages

Written by German Thomas Mann, this epic tome was published in the middle of the
war, in 1943 in Sweden. The novel retells the famous stories of Genesis - from
Jacob to Joseph - set within the historical context of the Amarna Period of Egyptian
history (around 1300 BC). It took Mann 16 years to write the four parts that make up
the whole - if only he’d decided to go the Lloyd-Webber routem write a few songs
and turn it into a musical instead, he’d have made a lot more money.

Author: Samuel Richardson

984,870 words/1,534 pages

An example of an epistolary novel - one written as a series of documents such as letters or diary
entries - this huge book was published in 1748, telling a tragic story of a heroine constantly set
back by her family. We’ll be honest: if we were going to read almost a million words, we’d
probably appreciate a happy ending.