For writers and readers, time is an essential commodity. As our world shifts ever further toward optimization and productivity, taking that time back can be vital work in maintaining a creative practice. When there’s no time to spare, where can we look to find fulfillment in the world of writing around us? For writers of novellas, concision is essential and exacting. For readers, novellas present an opportunity for transportation within the time constraints of our contemporary world.
An oft-neglected format in commercial publishing, the novella offers the interior world of a novel with the added advantage of brevity. The form also presents a unique challenge to writers: How can one create a work that is both expansive and succinct? These authors bring the turbulence and uncertainty of the past decade into brilliant relief in under 200 pages. Whether you’re looking to transport yourself during a train commute, or while waiting in a doctor’s office, or on an hour layover, these eleven books, recommended by the staff of Electric Literature, can be devoured in a single sitting.
Editor’s note: The literary guide below was recommended by Electric Literature staff and interns and written collaboratively by Grace Gaynor, Evander Reyes, and Lennie Roeber-Tsiongas.
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken
The narrator of It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over is both untethered and paradoxically conscious as she drifts through the afterlife. She holds onto sparse remnants of memories—her previous life and the longing that characterized it—while heading West, accompanied by a sentient, loquacious crow that may or may not be a figment of her decaying imagination. As humorous and absurd as it is devastating, It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over offers a poignant meditation on memory, mortality, and the persistent force of love.
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
Silvie, a repressed teenager, experiences the grind of the Iron Age while living alongside her brutal father, subdued mother, and a group of curious archaeology students. As Ghost Wall touches on age-old issues of gender, tradition, class, and family, the narrative becomes a thrumming rumination on history, culture, and ancestry. The book asks and attempts to answer the question: What separates us from our “primitive” past?
The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken
Corporate lingo intertwines with dream-like lyricism to underscore this haunting depiction of humanity ruled by pseudo-productivity. A narrative held together by questions of life, labor, and technology, The Employees is a sharp, satirical 22nd-century tale that manages to ground readers in the dark expanse of outer space.
The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda
Translated into English for the first time in 2023, The Premonition offers an idiosyncratic portrait of memory and familial connection. The titular “premonition” follows the narrator, Yayoi, as she grapples with the absence of her childhood memories. In response, she moves in with her aunt, whose peculiar lifestyle seems to spurn the domestic idealism that has characterized Yayoi’s life thus far. Between sleeping on the floor and eating flan for dinner, Yayoi follows both her aunt and her intuitions towards an unpredictable chasm of truth.
Open Throat by Henry Hoke
Open Throat is a modern folktale about a mountain lion navigating a life marred by territorial disputes, environmental degradation, and human carelessness. The lion, whose name is “not made of noises a person can make,” is undeniably feral and equally lovable–characteristics admired by the young girl who takes them in. Henry Hoke’s unique narrative transcends the goals of traditional storytelling while blurring the lines between human and animal worlds.
Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches
Boulder follows an unnamed Catalan woman who flees her monotonous life in Barcelona for South America, drifting from job to job as a cook in summer camps and on ships along the Chilean coast. She finds freedom in the simplicity and solitude of her work, yet gradually feels the absence of companionship. When she meets Samsa, a woman who brings both passion and disruption, her nomadic independence collides with the expectations of partnership, home, and motherhood. Eva Baltasar, a celebrated poet before turning to fiction, infuses the novel with a visceral lyricism that captures the tension between desire and confinement, the raw immediacy of the body, and the quiet unease that can underlie intimacy and routine.
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Winner of both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, Binti follows a young woman who must bridge the divide between her familial and acquired knowledge . . . the fate of the universe depends on it. Binti is the first of her people to attend Oomza University, a prestigious intergalactic school that has made a powerful enemy. In order to reach the university, Binti must travel into danger, armed only with her ancestral knowledge, inherent wisdom, and the courage to embark on a remarkable interstellar journey.
“Such Common Life” from Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li
“Such Common Life,” a novella within Yiyun Li’s collection Wednesday’s Child, traces the delicate relationship between Dr. Edwina Ditmus, an 88-year-old retired scientist, and Ida, her younger Chinese caregiver. Set mostly within the confines of Dr. Ditmus’s home, the story unfolds through their quiet conversations and introspections, revealing two lives shaped by solitude, aging, migration, and memory. Their “common life” exists both in what they choose to share—memories and reflections—and in the quotidian rhythms of caretaking and daily routines. With Li’s characteristically spare, luminous prose, the novella transforms ordinary moments into a meditation on what endures—and what quietly fades—over a lifetime.
The Strangers by Jon Bilbao, translated by Katie Whittemore
The Strangers is a tense, unsettling novel about Jon and Katharina, a couple whose quiet, routine-bound life in a coastal house in northern Spain is disrupted in disturbing ways. One rainy evening, strange lights appear in the sky above their town in Cantabria. The next morning, two enigmatic visitors, Markel and Virginia, arrive. As Jon and Katharina probe the truth behind their guests’ motives, unexpected developments and hidden motives turn every interaction fraught and uncertain. Bilbao masterfully blends the ordinary with the uncanny, crafting a slow-burning psychological drama in which the couple’s melancholic domestic life is transformed into something paranoid and unsettling—an experience that forces them towards each other.
Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman
While barricaded inside the Westbrook Correctional Facility’s computer lab, an unnamed narrator—also the editor-in-chief of the prison’s literary journal—liveblogs a confessional and memoiristic final Editor’s Letter. The narrator discusses his varied past and considers his impending death; he acknowledges that his fate will most likely be inflicted by his fellow prisoners. Tense, surprising, and riotously funny, Riots I Have Known is a boundless, satirical novel about an incarcerated literary citizen.
Information Age by Cora Lewis
Equal parts intimate revelation and journalistic study, Information Age holds a mirror (or maybe a magnifying glass) to our modern world. The book follows a young journalist as she contends with asymmetrical relationships, job losses, and the quiet disorder of life in your twenties. With sharp wit, snippets of delightfully weird observation, and a last sentence that lingers, Lewis portrays something true about life in just under 200 pages.
