A novel is a long fictitious prose narrative that usually deals with the human experience through a connected sequence of events and a more or less complex cast of characters. It is the dominant form of extended literary fiction.

The novel emerged in something like its modern shape in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and has since proven extraordinarily adaptable. It can absorb almost any subject, style, or structure—from tight psychological studies to multi-generational sagas, from realism to fantasy. Length allows development of character over time, interwoven plots, and sustained exploration of theme and social world. Readers expect a degree of completeness: a beginning, development, and ending that feel purposeful.

Novels differ from short stories by scale and from epics by their usual focus on ordinary rather than heroic life, though there are exceptions on both sides. The form continues to evolve with new voices, technologies, and cultural pressures. Its central promise remains the immersive experience of lives that are not the reader’s own.

A book-length work of prose fiction organized around characters and their unfolding story is a novel.