Someone asked: “Something under 200 pages.”
Books under 200 pages.
Short doesn't mean slight. These are the books we recommend when someone says they don't have time — each one finishable in a weekend, none of them forgettable.
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Foster
Claire Keegan · 1900
A girl spends one summer with relatives on an Irish farm. Barely a hundred pages, and it will flatten you.
Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan · 2020
A coal merchant, a convent and one quiet act of courage. Perfect prose with nothing wasted.
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata · 2018
Funny, deadpan and slightly unsettling. A woman who fits perfectly into a shop and nowhere else.
Train Dreams
Denis Johnson · 2006
An entire American life in a novella. Strange, tender and full of wild images.
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin · 1956
Paris, desire and shame, written with a heat that still burns. One of the great short novels.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Gabriel García Márquez · 1984
You know who dies on the first page, and it's still gripping. A murder mystery in reverse.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson · 1962
Two sisters, a poisoned family and a village that hates them. Creepy, darkly funny and very short.
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka · 1975
A man wakes up as an insect and worries about being late for work. It's funnier than its reputation.
Not quite it?
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