A novella (also called a short novel) is a written, fictional, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000.[1] Other definitions start as low as 10,000 words and run as high as 70,000 words.
The novella is a common literary genre in several European languages. English language novellas include John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Herman Melville's Billy Budd, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans.
The English word "novella" is derived from the Italian word "novella", feminine of "novello" which means new.
中文：duan pian xiao shuo；英文：novelette。
小說的一種。其特點是篇幅短小，情節簡潔，人物集中，結構精巧。它往往選取和描繪富有典型意義的生活片斷，着力刻畫主要人物的性格特徵，反映生活的某一側面，使讀者“藉一斑略知全豹”。正如茅盾所說：“短篇小說主要是抓住一個富有典型意義的生活片斷，來說明一個問題或表現比它本身廣阔得多、也復雜得多的社會現象的。”這“也就决定了它的篇幅不可能長，它的故事不可能發生於長年纍月(有些短篇小說的故事衹發生於幾天或幾小時之內)，它的人物不可能太多，而人物也不可能一定要有性格的發展”.短篇小說又稱為小小說。