The incredible shrinking novel: why short fiction is having a big moment

In a world of content overload, time-poor readers are gravitating toward something they can actually finish: short novels. Once the preserve of indie publishers and experimental authors, the slim literary novel is now front and centre, scooping prizes, going viral on BookTok, and dominating bookshop displays.

From Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These to Samantha Harvey's Orbital, these compact works of fiction pack a punch around 200 pages. No filler. No indulgent middle act. Just distilled intensity, executed with precision. 

As Karolina Sutton, literary agent to Margaret Atwood and Haruki Murakami, puts it: “There is something appealing about distilling ethical and moral dilemmas into something sparser, with more economy.”

This isn’t just a trend driven by attention spans or printing costs. The rise of short fiction reflects a broader shift in publishing and reading culture. 

Readers are more open to hybrid forms. Indie presses like Fitzcarraldo, Charco and Peirene are championing novellas and shorter books, many of which are translated. And with the Booker and International Booker prizes recognising more compact fiction, literary prestige is no longer tied to page count.

Part of the appeal lies in how these books meet readers where they are: offering powerful, immersive storytelling in a fraction of the time. For many, a 150-page novel feels more achievable than a 500-page epic, especially when juggling work, family and digital distractions. 

These books also fit more easily into busy lives: they can be finished in a single weekend or even a long afternoon, offering the satisfaction of completion and the intensity of an unbroken narrative experience. With rising interest in audio and digital formats, shorter books also suit new ways of consuming fiction.

That's a real appeal (for me, at least), as finding the time for big novels and finishing them can be tough.

Here are seven brilliant literary novels around 200 pages that prove less really can be more:

1. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (116 pages) – A quiet, devastating portrait of complicity and courage in 1980s Ireland.
2. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (116 pages) – A lyrical tale of an ordinary life on the edges of American myth.
3. Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel (195 pages) – A haunting postwar fable about memory, guilt and moral responsibility.
4. Foster by Claire Keegan (88 pages) – Another Keegan triumph. A temporary foster placement unfolds into a tender study of care, loss and belonging.
5. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (176 pages) – A Finnish island, a girl and her 
6. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (213 pages) ) – This is a standout. Translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, the novel takes place in a small Tokyo café where visitors can travel back in time, but only under strict condition.
7. This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (209 pages). Another genre-bending success. Told through a series of lyrical letters between two rival time-travelling agents, it fuses sci-fi, romance and poetic prose in a novella that has won the Hugo and Nebula awards. 

And for those who love their short fiction even shorter, 5 short story collections to try:

1. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver – This is a personal favourite. It is minimalism at its most moving. Domestic heartbreak in just a few brushstrokes. Love this book. 
2. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado – Queer, surreal and razor-sharp.
3. Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez – Gothic political stories from Argentina that blaze off the page.
4. Fast Lanes by Jayne Anne Phillips – Lyrical, haunting stories of drift, desire and dislocation in 1980s America. Well worth digging out. 
5. Birds of America by Lorrie Moore – Funny, melancholy and piercing, these are lessons in tone and emotional precision.

Short fiction is no longer a literary sideshow. It's a form that demands, and rewards, close attention. Or as Gaby Wood of the Booker Prize Foundation puts it: “It doesn’t matter how long a book is in pages. It’s about the space it takes up in the mind.”