A novella is a short novel or a long short story. an autobiographical novella from French writer Marguerite Duras. a story that is shorter than a novel, but longer than a short story (storia novella , from novello , from novellus; NOVEL). Story with a compact and pointed plot, often realistic and satiric in tone. Originating in Italy during the Middle Ages, it was often based on local events; individual tales often were gathered into collections. The novella developed into a psychologically subtle and structured short tale, with writers frequently using a frame story to unify tales around a theme, as in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. The term is also used to describe a work of fiction intermediate in length and sometimes complexity between a short story and a novel. Examples of novellas include Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground (1864), Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902), Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1912), and Henry James's The Aspern Papers (1888)