Romanetto (romaneto in Czech) is a literary genre popularized by the Czech writer Jakub Arbes. Works in this genre are usually novella length: longer than a traditional short story, but shorter than a novel. Their plots include an unexplained mystery that is later explained via rationality and scientific fact.[1] While largely associated with Arbes, the term has been applied to modern Czech literature as well.[2]
Arbes was a translator of Edgar Allan Poe[3] and often drew upon Poe's supernatural themes in his work, calling the writer a "great model" with "[an] unusual knack for evoking fear in the reader via cold logical construction." The genre also bears similarities to crime literature and science fiction.[4] His first romanetto, and the work that gave rise to the form, was the popular story Svatý Xaverius (The Saint Xaverius), published in the magazine Lumir in 1873.[5] In this story, a painting by Franz Xaver Palko is believed to contain a magical cipher that leads to a hidden treasure, but the "treasure" in question is merely an obsessive knowledge that leads to the protagonist's death. Jan Neruda, the managing editor of the magazine, coined the term "romanetto"-- an italic diminutive version of the Czech word román, or "novel."