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Young Werther's love interest hands over the fatal instrument for his suicide, the climax of Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther
An epistolary novel (/ɪˈpɪstəlɛri/) is a novel written as a series of letters between the fictional characters of a narrative. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse other kinds of fictional document with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered to include novels composed of documents even if they do not include letters at all. More recently, epistolaries may include electronic documents such as recordings and radio, blog posts, and emails. The word epistolary is derived from Latin from the Greek word epistolē (ἐπιστολή), meaning a letter . This type of fiction is also sometimes known by the German term Briefroman or more generally as epistolary fiction.