This is a list of published novels with over 500,000 words. Currently, the longest novel in the world is Venmurasu, a modern setting of the Hindu epic Mahabharatha, finished in 2020 by Tamil writer Bahuleyan Jeyamohan which has over words. Compiling a list of longest novels yields different results depending on whether pages, words, or characters are counted. Length of a book is typically associated with its size (specifically its page count) leading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length. Word count is a direct way to measure the length of a novel in a manner unaffected by variations of format and page size. However, translating the story into different languages and dialects results in different word counts. Comparison of methods There are at least three ways to determine length: Character count is the best estimate of the total numbers of spaces, written characters, and punctuation. Word count is another method. Using computer software to count words is the current preferred method for academia and publications. However it is not very meaningful when comparing different languages, for instance, because some languages use more words to express a given idea than others. Due to formatting, the page count will depend on the choice of paper size, font, style, formatting, and illustrations in the published work, and thus cannot be considered a reliable measure of length, despite it being the easiest physical indicator of length to determine. For the purposes of this list, word count is ideal. A particular difficulty is created when comparing word counts across different writing systems. The logographic Chinese characters used to write East Asian languages each represent one morpheme and are not separated by spaces. The same character may at times stand for one word, and other times form part of a larger word. For instance, the characters 中 zhong and 国 guo can be used independently to mean "middle" and "kingdom", respectively, but can also be combined into Zhongguo 中国, "China" (i.e. "The Middle Kingdom"). One could theoretically construct a noun phrase Zhongguo Zhong Guo 中国中国 meaning "kingdoms in the middle of China". The absence of any formal marking of word boundaries means that it would be difficult to mechanically determine if such a phrase consists of two, three, or four words without knowing Chinese. East Asian bibliographies therefore generally give only the character count without attempting any word count. However,