Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar is possibly the finest novella of recent times. It takes fewer words to say what novels take twice or three times as many and fail to do. Concision, control, and constraint are the hallmarks of the literary form, and some of the greatest books - from Orwell’s Animal Farm to Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea – use the format.
Yet, it is not fashionable, nor is it popular with publishers who think it falls into a chasm between the short story and the novel. Mathematical definitions are not of much help – a novella could be anywhere from ten thousand to forty thousand words. Edgar Allan Poe caught the spirit best when he said it is a creation that is “readable in one sitting.” Ian McEwan calls it “the perfect form of prose fiction.”
Not everyone agrees. Stephen King, who has written novellas himself has called it “an ill-defined and disreputable literary banana republic.”
