The longest novel and poem in the world in any language are from Asia.

The Legend of King Gesar

The longest poem on  in the history of written human language is from Tibet. The poem is 1,000,000 verses in length! The poem is called in English, ‘The Legend of King Gesar’. The tibetan poem is being translated into Mandarin simplified Chinese strokes by authority of the Beijing government today. The original tibetan poem was an oral poem memorized by traditional Tibetan sages, whose sole purpose in life was to recite the verses of this poem! King Gesar is a legend king among Tibetan people. There is intense cultural controversy over whether the poem should be written in Tibetan strokes or Han Mandarin Simplified Chinese strokes. But since the Han Mandarin Chinese have political and economic control over Tibet, Mandarin written simplified Chinese strokes. Too bad in my opinion. I mean, this poem is originally Tibetan, right?

Tokugawa Ieyasu

The longest written novel in any language is from Japan. It is called Tokugawa Ieyasu by Sohachi Yamaoka. The original Japanese novel is gigantic! It contains 10,000,000 Japanese strokes! And remember, each stroke in either Korean, Japanese, or Chinese languages are translated into one or two English words. So, if an western scholar fluent on Japanese were to translate this novel, it wouls contain around 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 English words! That would be 20 times larger than the English translated novel ‘War and Peace’!

I could not imagine the ramifications of such books if they were to be translated into English, especially paperback! Each of these works would be equivalent to 15 to 20 paperback ‘War and Peace’ novels! Goodness gracious! For instance, one single Asian author, Sohachi Yamaoka, for that Japanese novel, especially! How did he ever have the patience and tolerance and time to accomplish such a feat?

Truly amazing magnum opuses of world literature! Just imagine ordering each one through Amazon.com? Your delivery would be one huge package indeed!