The Novella reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004
(provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Novella

A novella is a piece of short prose fiction, derived from from the Italian word for new.

In English, a novella consists of stories mid-way—in terms of length and complexity—between a short story and a novel, focusing on a single chain of events with a surprising turning point. Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902) is a fine example.

The Hugo and Nebula awards for science fiction define the novella as "A...story of between seventeen thousand five hundred (17,500) and forty thousand (40,000) words."

See also: literature


Novella is a commune of the Haute-Corse département in France, on the island of Corsica.