Tag: The Hole Inside the Earth

HITE and the Question of the UK’s Longest Novel

Total pages: 2731
Word count ~1.1 million
17 Volumes (including 2 volumes of Appendices)

The Hole Inside the Earth (HITE) may be the longest contiguous novel published in the United Kingdom.

HITE is structured as a single overarching narrative told across multiple genre streams. The same eight principal characters recur throughout the work — psometimes through reincarnation or transformed identities — while narrative threads increasingly intersect and merge. By Volume 15, the previously separated streams fully converge into one unified storyline.

For this reason, HITE is presented not as a conventional series of separate novels, but as one contiguous literary work with internally partitioned narrative arcs.

Is it the longest?

Novel	Approx. word count	Format	Country
HITE	~1.1M+	contiguous single narrative	UK
Clarissa	~970k	multi-volume epistolary	UK
A Dance to the Music of Time	~1M+	sequence/cycle	Uk
In Search of Lost Time	~1.2M	multi-volume cycle	France

Why this is such a difficult question to answer?

Determining the “longest novel” is not straightforward, as there is no single agreed standard of measurement. Some works are assessed by word count, others by printed page count, and others still by volume structure or publication format. The question becomes more complex when considering whether a work is truly contiguous — i.e., a single continuous narrative — or a multi-volume cycle, serial publication, or loosely connected sequence of novels. Many commonly cited “long novels,” including major canonical works, exist across multiple volumes or structurally independent sections, which complicates direct comparison. As a result, any claim to “longest novel” must be understood in relation to clearly defined criteria.

Works such as In Search of Lost Time are often used as reference points for extremely long unified novels. However, HITE differs in that its narrative structure is explicitly partitioned into interacting genre streams that progressively converge into a single continuous storyline.

HITE is structured as a continuous interconnected narrative rather than a sequence of separately complete novels, cycles, or independently published serial volumes, featuring unified character continuity and progressive narrative convergence across its internal streams.

HITE is structured as a continuous interconnected narrative rather than a sequence of separately complete novels, cycles, or independently published serial volumes.

The main contiguous narrative excludes approximately 30–40k words (around 200 pages) of supplementary material originally written as optional bonus content. This material is not included in the primary word or page count, and was separated to preserve affordability and ensure equitable access across narrative streams.

Has it been verified by Guinness World Records?

HITE has not been formally verified by Guinness World Records. Such verification would require a paid assessment process and independent review, which is beyond the scope of the current project.

Diary Entries: The Hole Inside the Earth

From Green, Chapter 3
Tuma came to a decision:
“I will let you go Llanka. On one condition.”
“Yes, brother?”
“Each time you visit the City you will bring me some of your blood, either in a pot, or fresh, as it were.”
He smiled. Llanka knew exactly what he meant. She stripped and raised her thigh to him. Tuma drew a knife he kept for the purpose, a knife with a thin, crescent blade, and drew it across her thigh, sucking up the blood that dripped from the wound while she moaned in ecstasy. After taking what he wanted, Tuma handed her a jar of paste, made from the foliage of the Dragon fruit. Llanka rubbed the green paste into the wound and pressed the crushed leaves against it until the bleeding had stopped.
“Go,” Tuma told her. “And do not tell a soul about our agreement.”

Introduction – 1 February, 2019
I don’t know when I first conceived of The Hole Inside the Earth, but the idea to write something that spanned the whole of man’s existence from early times to the far future has been around for a long time. I think I first started writing Green and then the other colours in the Autumn of 2015, and I remember needing one more thread, as I only had 6, so I started Indigo on a very cold day in Jan or early Feb 2016. Until now, I often thought I would abandon it. In fact, in the early days, it was just an experiment, and I don’t think I or anybody else thought I would finish it. But now I am through the worst. There have been times over the last year when I just had to make a huge effort to keep going, and I think it affected me physically. I only started this diary in 2019, but then again, it’s the first time I felt that I could see light at the end of the tunnel. I had just finished Blue, Chapter 8, which was inspired by Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and gave me some of the flavour for the second half of the series.
nb: HITE is my acronym for The Hole Inside the Earth.

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The Hole Inside the Earth – epic quest from the far past to the far future!

Only the Vampire Priests understand the Blood Moon Prophecy: “A drop of His blood fills the cup and brings the Blood Moon Dawn.”

“Lots of cool action and drew me well in.” – AHF Magazine.

Both men, distracted, stepped back. She knew they would be unbalanced, so she executed the estoc, her sword strike entering one man’s exposed right armpit. He fell.

I, Zosimyache, mercenary of ancient Greece, wrote this.
I once asked Omacron what time seemed like for one who had survived for so long in a tumultuous world.
“Time is meaningless,” he said.
“Then, what does have meaning?” I asked.
“Memory.”
This, then, is the story, as recalled by me and those Rememberers, few in number, who survived the last war on Earth. I wasn’t there at the beginning, but I am here now in the tale that continues.
– from The Garden, final chapter of Volume 15: The Sea of Lost Intentions

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