I don’t have any tattoos on my body, but I always thought that if I did, I would get something related to Dostoyevsky. After another Zimmer writer published his piece on having a tattoo of James Joyce, I wished I had thought of the idea first. The man—I’m talking about Dostoyevsky again now, not Josh or James Joyce—was a genius; his writing is unmatched. Crime and Punishment is a masterpiece, my favourite book to date, and a brilliant introduction to Russian literature. It’s widely recommended that a person’s first Dostoyevsky should be White Nights—and I endorse that wholeheartedly; what a beauty—but as you level up and gain points to unlock the next realms of Dostoyevsky’s work (and Russian literature in general for that matter), you soon come to find that it it definitely not as easy as it seems. Go any further and you meet Tolstoy, another genius, though maybe not as emotionally raw as Dostoyevsky. As I write this piece, my copy of The Count of Monte Cristo sits beside me, watching me, wondering if I will mention it in this piece. Below it sits Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, but that is one I dare to say I haven’t touched yet.

You may have caught on that I am talking about masterpieces, those books listed on numerous pretentious ‘books everyone must read in their lifetime’ blogs and guides to become ‘well read’. But, when War and Peace sits at roughly 1300 pages long, I dare to say that it’s getting a bit ridiculous. I met someone recently who told me she read Emily Ratajkowski’s essay collection, My Body, and Tolstoy’s War and Peace at the same time–a humorous and distinct choice, but it is fascinating how it so easily encapsulates this problem: to survive a literary monolith like War and Peace, you have to read something ‘normal’ on the side. A classic of that length is not just a book, it’s a marathon, and not everyone can run a marathon. When I go into Google and type “why is The Count of Monte Cristo so…” what comes up below finishes the question with “so good” at first, surprisingly, then sitting underneath is “so long”. This is my point solidified into one image, and it’s reassuring to know that other readers grapple with this problem too. Underneath this search flood are numerous videos titled ‘How to Read War and Peace’ as if we need a guide to overcome such a hurdle — and we do. 

Now is the time when I come to write that I haven’t actually read War and Peace myself, so how can I ever be a real reader? I am not sure if I will ever find the chance to read this book at all. The best thing is that there is never the ‘right time’ to read a book of such a great length, and with a classic, you are never late to the party anyway. Plus, the sheer sight of the book (which I luckily bought in one volume), taking up heaps of space on my bookshelf, is enough to send me—or anyone—running towards a novella instead. With this disastrous confession out in the open, I leave Tolstoy on the shelf for now, and move on before I talk myself into a 1300 page commitment I am definitely not ready for. 

The Count of Monte Cristo sits in a completely different category. Yes, it is a beast, and yes, it looks like a large brick on your bookshelf. But while War and Peace feels (according to some) like an endurance test you have to survive, Dumas’ monster of a novel—clocking in at well over a thousand pages in any edition—is one you actively never want to end. Unlike the heavy slog of traditional monoliths, you whizz through the novel surprisingly quickly. The length is precisely the point. You cannot rush a proper, authentic, slow-burn revenge plot that spans decades. A reader of Dumas’ novel is a patient one; one who lives to meticulously pay attention to detail and enjoys an elaborate setup where every single narrative domino is placed with agonising precision. If Alexander Dumas had crammed his protagonist —Edmond Dantès —into a brisk three-hundred pages, still detailing his imprisonment, escape, and systematic dismantling of his enemies, it would lose the very thing that makes it addictive. The sheer bulk of the book mirrors the sheer scale of the betrayal and time it takes to execute a masterpiece of vengeance. You need to sit in the Château d'If with Dantès for what feels like an eternity so that when he finally re-emerges as the Count, you feel the weight of those years right alongside him. Some books are unnecessarily long, but The Count of Monte Cristo is long because absolute, multi-layered, brilliantly calculated payback is not something that can be (or should be) rushed.

On the flip-side, some stories reach their peak in a fraction of the pages. Take Stefan Zweig’s Chess at 98 pages or Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog at 130. Both are triumphs yet neither asks for weeks of your life. They are short and sweet, sharp and effective, flawless just as they are. Would they still be loved if they were longer? Probably—and this is a flaw in my argument since they are both white men—but I can’t say that I would’ve been as hooked if they were bloated to five times their size. I am not too much of a fan of these second conditional questions, the what ifs where you imagine some reality that is not your own. Could Zweig and Bulgakov’s novels have been longer? Of course, maybe they considered that, but the point is that they weren’t. Zweig didn’t need twelve hundred pages to unravel the psychological destruction of WWII that he portrays; instead it is done in simply one hundred. You are trapped in a suffocating mental pressure cooker that leaves you trying to catch your breath. It is a text as short as his marriage to his second wife. Bulgakov, on the other hand, doesn’t drag out his wild, sharp, satire of Soviet bureaucracy; he delivers his novel as strange, hilarious and punchy; a parable that gets right to the heart of what he wants to deliver. Both of these are the ultimate proof that a story does not need an epic length to leave a permanent mark. 

Length is not a badge of honour, and you don’t gain brownie points if your story is blabbering on more than mine is. A thousand pages of slow-burn revenge can be an addictive pleasure, just as eighty pages of claustrophobic brilliance can be an undeniable triumph that stays with you long after you’ve closed it. The page count of a masterpiece is never an accident; size is always a deliberate choice. I would love to ask Tolstoy personally why War and Peace is so long, but considering he’s been dead since 1910, we will just have to trust his judgement. He chose every single page to construct a specific experience, which means that every page has a purpose. 

I, too, am put off by the physical weight of a book on my bookshelf, but for the author, it really was that serious.