Long books can often take a little while to finish. Anything much over 500 pages can feel like a herculean task, but if it’s well written and interesting, it may be able to keep your attention.
Take Stephen King’s IT, for example. It’s a whopping book at 1,138 pages in its first edition – but it’s so perfectly crafted that it doesn’t feel like a chore to finish.
But the longest book in the world is far longer than that, and you’ll be mortified at how many characters it contains.
In 1912, the world’s longest novel was written by Marcel Proust from France, namely A la recherche du temps perdu, which translates to ‘In Search of Lost Time’.
The book contains an estimated 9,609,000 characters, where each letter counts as one character, and spaces count as characters also.
The average book contains 350,000 to 400,000 characters. This is based on a word count of 70,000 to 80,000 words, with an average of five characters per word.
This means that Proust’s work was around 24 times longer than the average book, landing him a spot in the Guinness World Records.
Proust produced the first volume of his 13-volume masterpiece in 1912 (it was first published in 1913).
The second part of his work won international awards as soon as it was published, and with them, an international reputation.
He is considered to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.
For those wondering how long it would take to finish the book, if the average reader reads at 300 words per minute, it could take approximately 3 days, 3 hours, and 46 minutes to read the book.
That means you’d need to read non-stop, though, which most people are not going to do. Typically, people can take weeks, months or even years to finish it.
Taking to Reddit, someone wrote of the book: “Proust had been on my literary bucket list for nearly 20 years and last year I finally decided to tackle it. My edition is ~3,700 pages including the endnotes. It took me just over a year to read it all (about 10 pages per day). There were countless beautiful passages and incredible insights… But it was also mind-numbingly slow for hundreds of pages at a time (especially volumes 4-5/6).
“It’s a book like no other. I believe it changed me to a certain extent, and it definitely felt good to finally cross it off my list. But if I step back and really think about it, I can’t say that it was worth it. 3,700 pages of prose, much of which is rambling inner monologue, is a LOT.
“For others who have finished it, what did you think? Am I the only one who wouldn’t recommend it to someone else?”
Someone responded: “I love In Search of Lost Time like a friend, and it is never far from my mind”.
Another penned: “I loved reading it. It took me a long time, but I enjoyed every minute of it. I read it in French, though. And I know that translations can sometimes make books uninteresting”.