The ten best short novels under 150 pages – chosen by experts

Academics at The Conversation have curated ten essential short novels, each under a hundred fifty pages — proving you don't need a thousand-page tome to be transformed. The list spans Denis Johnson's meditative Train Dreams, a novella about frontier myth and ecological grief; Samuel Selvon's postcolonial masterpiece The Lonely Londoners, which follows Caribbean immigrants navigating London after the war; and Italo Calvino's experimental Invisible Cities, a collection of imaginary realms. Whether you're drawn to surreal comedy, literary grief, or stories of resistance — like Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence's account of Australia's stolen generation — these experts argue there's genuine depth in brevity.

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