Record #00054Culture & Entertainment archive
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time contains an estimated 9.609 million characters and holds the longest-novel record under the character-count definition.
Current Record
about9,609,000characters
Current record value
Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) is listed by Guinness World Records as the world's longest novel.
Guinness gives an estimated total of 9,609,000 characters and specifies that letters and spaces are counted as characters.
The Guinness page lists France and the year 1912, while also noting that the first volume was produced in 1912 and first published in 1913. Because the complete work was published in multiple volumes over time, 1912 is not modeled here as a continuous record-holding start date.
The record conclusion has sufficient verification support.
Basis: direct confirmation by an authority
This update changes summary wording only and preserves original verification.
Current Entry identifies the current entry in this archive; it does not establish that the record is still held today.
The record value on this page is organized from the public sources above. Measurement methods may differ; JiLuDB follows the unified method described for each entry.
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