Shortest hardback novel Infographic

Sometimes, you do just have a lot of people to thank, I guess.

©2015 James Mathurin

Shortest hard - back novel

The shortest hard-back novel ever published was Visits to the Nabobs by Gwynne Arbunathapathy, published in 1942, “a jolly account of one travelling family of cobblers’ encounters with ancient Druids, set in the Welsh valleys”, according to one review. Although the book was 354 pages long, the story only filled the last 56 pages of it, while 110 of the previous pages were filled with the author’s exhaustive list of people he wished to thank (including every member of the Lithuanian consulate in Canada, “without whom a third of this book would have been hopelessly inaccurate”), and a further 183 pages contained the list of who the book was dedicated to, a list which included every member of Arbunathapathy’s exhaustively researched family tree, going back 17 generations.

Gwynne Arbunathapathy, pictured here with her publisher Gilly 'Private' Bryden, who received some 7 pages of dedication in her book. From the collection by adobemac

©2009 James Mathurin

The Shortest-lived religion on record

The shortest-lived religion on record was the Pondeastic sect of Lithuania, formed and dissolved on July 17th 1956 by Marzo Passakre, 24. Passakre believed that he had been contacted by God, who told him to run back home to prepare for the rapture. Within 4 hours he had recruited some 257 followers in his home town of Bursnabruk, and had written a draft for the first book of his ‘revised bible’. The religion ended when his younger brother Uri told him that the voice he had heard had actually been him passing on a message from their mother to come home to feed their goat. A friend of the family told reporters, “Marzo has always been a natural leader, and not the most thoughtful of people. Really, we should have seen this coming.”

©Copyright 2008 James Mathurin