# Character Networks and Book Genre Classification

## TL;DR

This study analyzes social character networks across different literary genres to identify genre-specific features, finding that many network measures do not significantly differ between genres, challenging previous assumptions.

## Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive comparison of character network measures across genres and questions prior claims about assortativity as a genre discriminator.

## Key findings

- Power law degree distribution independent of genre
- No significant differences in network measures across genres
- Previous assortativity-based genre separation is not supported

## Abstract

We compare the social character networks of biographical, legendary and fictional texts, in search for marks of genre differentiation. We examine the degree distribution of character appearance and find a power law that does not depend on the literary genre or historical content. We also analyze local and global complex networks measures, in particular, correlation plots between the recently introduced Lobby (or Hirsh $H(1)$) index and Degree, Betweenness and Closeness centralities. Assortativity plots, which previous literature claims to separate fictional from real social networks, were also studied. We've found no relevant differences in the books for these network measures and we give a plausible explanation why the previous assortativity result is not correct.