Short contemporary novels
Modern fiction does short better than any era before it: Small Things Like These, The Sense of an Ending, Convenience Store Woman and twenty more, all under 300 pages. Last verified 29 August 2026.
Page counts are for standard UK paperbacks and vary by edition. Where a book sits close to the line we say so.
Describe the short novel you’re after
The list
- The Sense of an Ending, Barnes, 2011, about 150 pages
- On Chesil Beach, McEwan, 2007, about 166 pages
- Small Things Like These, Keegan, 2021, about 110 pages
- Foster, Keegan, 2010, about 90 pages
- Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Porter, 2015, about 114 pages
- The Vegetarian, Han Kang, 2016, about 183 pages
- Train Dreams, Denis Johnson, 2011, about 116 pages
- Chronicle of a Death Foretold, García Márquez, 1981, about 120 pages
- Open Water, Azumah Nelson, 2021, about 145 pages
- Sula, Morrison, 1973, about 174 pages
- The Bluest Eye, Morrison, 1970, about 206 pages
- Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss, 2018, about 130 pages
- A Month in the Country, J.L. Carr, 1980, about 135 pages
- Dept. of Speculation, Offill, 2014, about 177 pages
- Weather, Offill, 2020, about 200 pages
- The Buddha in the Attic, Otsuka, 2011, about 144 pages
- Fever Dream, Schweblin, 2017, about 150 pages
- Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson, 2019, about 254 pages
- Tinkers, Paul Harding, 2009, about 191 pages
- Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee, 1980, about 170 pages
- Housekeeping, Robinson, 1980, about 219 pages
- So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell, 1980, about 135 pages
- The Driver's Seat, Spark, 1970, about 110 pages
- The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro, 1989, about 258 pages
- A Single Man, Isherwood, 1964, about 150 pages. Straddles the classic and contemporary line, placed here
- Convenience Store Woman, Murata, 2018, about 160 pages. It also turns up on our Lessons in Chemistry list, where we’ve matched it axis by axis.
- Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro, 2005 (about 282 pages in the Faber edition)
On the line
These sit close enough to 300 that the edition decides it (just under 300 in the right edition, check before you buy).
- Stoner, John Williams, 1965, about 278 pages. Also straddles the era line
- Gilead, Robinson, 2004, about 247 to 290 pages
Just over the line
Beloved at about 324 pages and Klara and the Sun at about 320 are both defensibly short and both miss the cap, which is what a hard cap costs you.
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More by length: short books under 300 pages, sorted by how you want to read.
Questions
What is the best short modern novel?
Small Things Like These, at about 110 pages, is the one most readers finish and immediately hand to someone else. The Sense of an Ending at about 150 and Convenience Store Woman at about 160 are the other two people come back for. All three are on this list.
Why are so many recent literary novels this short?
Because modern fiction stopped treating length as seriousness. Foster is about 90 pages, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers about 114, Train Dreams about 116, and all three won their arguments on compression rather than scale. It is the one era where the short shelf is the strong shelf.