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Cover of Behold the Dreamers (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

How long does it take to read Behold the Dreamers (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel?

Imbolo Mbue, Sarah Tardy

Behold the Dreamers (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel by Imbolo Mbue, Sarah Tardy takes about 7 hours 38 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 7 hours 38 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2016. 416 pages, about 114,400 words.

16 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 12 hours 43 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 7 hours 38 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 46 minutes

The page count is the median across 16 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

When Jende Jonga journeys to New York City from Cameroon in 2004 on a visitors' visa in hopes of obtaining a green card, he's sure his life will only improve. After saving up enough money to bring over Jende's wife, Neni, and six-year-old son, the family moves into an apartment in Harlem. Then Jende hits the jackpot in 2007 when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a wealthy Lehman Brothers executive. But working for the Edwardses isn't as cushy and above board as Jende expected. Clark's long hours at the office and frequent late-night "appointments" at the Chelsea Hotel raise red flags with his wife, Cindy. When Neni agrees to accompany the Edwards family to Southampton as a temporary nanny for their youngest son, she learns far more than she bargained for about Cindy's fragile mental state. Before long, the pressure of keeping what they know about Clark and Cindy -- and the threat of deportation -- becomes too much for the Jongas to bear, threatening the stability of their marriage and their ability to remain in a country they still can't call home.

Subjects: Family secrets, Cameroonians, Families, Upper class, Immigrants, Fiction

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