How long does it take to read Asylum Piece and Other Stories?
Asylum Piece and Other Stories by Anna Kavan takes about 3 hours 53 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 53 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1940. 212 pages, about 58,300 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 29 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 53 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 26 minutes |
The page count is the median across 8 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Since Anna Kavan died in 1968 there has been a strong revival of interest in her writings. Asylum Piece, a study of various aspects of insanity, first appeared in 1940 and still enjoys a reputation as one of its author's most original and perceptive books. It as, however, long been out of print. Reviewing the original edition in the Sunday Times Sir Despond MacCarthy wrote: 'If Asylum Piece is not based on actual experience it is certainly an astonishing achievement. ... What is remarkable is that the subject of these stories not only kept the lamp alight in the fog of, at any rate, impending insanity, but was able to project dramatically the experience of fellow sufferers. That is just what the really insane can never do. ... There is a beauty about these stories which has nothing to do with their pathological interest, and is the result of art. Two or three, if signed by a famous name, might rank among the story-teller's memorable achievements. There is beauty in the stillness of the author's ultimate despair.' (From the book jacket, british reprint published in 1972).
Subjects: Autobiographical fiction, Psychological fiction, Mentally ill women, Psychiatric hospital patients, surrealism fiction, English Psychological fiction
