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 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 {{link=Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhaylovich">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).