The Notebook is a 1996 romantic novel by American novelist Nicholas Sparks, based on a true story. The novel was later adapted into a popular film of the same name, in 2004. The Indian Bollywood film, Zindagi Tere Naam, starring Mithun Chakraborty, is also based on it.

Background

This was Nicholas Sparks' first published novel. It was the third written after The Passing and The Royal Murders, which he did not publish. He wrote it over a period of six months in 1994. Literary agent Theresa Park discovered Sparks by picking the book out of her agency's slush pile and reading it. Park offered to represent him. In October 1995, Park secured a $1 million advance for the book from the Time Warner Book Group, and the novel was published in October 1997. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list in its first week of release. The Notebook was a hardcover best seller for more than a year.

In interviews, Sparks said he was inspired to write the novel by the grandparents of his wife, who had been married for more than 60 years when he met them. In The Notebook, he tried to express the long romantic love of that couple