Six-hour novel

A six-hour novel is a novel whose story unfolds within a six-hour timeframe. More importantly, however, is that each page of a six-hour novel represents one minute within the story; thus, a novel that covered six hours would consist of 360 pages. The form is not required, however, to conform strictly to the six-hour prerequisite; a "six-hour novel" may also be 300 pages (covering five hours), or 480 pages (covering eight hours) or 600 pages (covering ten hours).

In theory, a single story of 1,440 pages -- broken up over three, four, or six separate books -- could cover an entire day. Inspired by the real-time aspect of the Fox thriller 24, and films like Rope (1948), Nick of Time (1995) and Timecode (2000), the six-hour novel was conceived by American novelist Anthony J Fuchs for his psychodrama the House at the Edge of Reality and his spy-thriller the Dark Side of Midnight.

One of the first and most famous, albeit unintentional, examples of the genre was James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses, which covers 18 hours in 18 chapters.