How long does it take to read East, West?
stories
East, West by Salman Rushdie takes about 3 hours 58 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 58 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1994. 216 pages, about 59,400 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 36 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 58 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 29 minutes |
The page count is the median across 15 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
In this brilliant collection - his first major work of fiction since The Satanic Verses - one of the great writers in the world today gives us nine stories that together reveal the intricate intimacies and unbridgeable distances between the East and the West. A rickshaw driver dreams of being a Bombay movie star while, in a futuristic Western dystopia, legendary Hollywood icons acquire magic powers. Indian diplomats who as childhood friends hatched "Star Trek" fantasies must boldly go into a hidden universe of conspiracy and violence; and Hamlet's jester, too, is caught up in murderous intrigues. In Rushdie's hybrid world, an Indian guru can be a red-headed Welshman, while Christopher Columbus is an immigrant, dreaming of Western glory. A young Pakistani woman faces a journey to England to meet the husband she does not know; an elderly Indian lady in London must choose between love and home. With profound sensitivity, Rushdie allows himself, like his characters, to be pulled now in one direction, now in another. Yet throughout this collection he remains, really, a writer who insists on our cultural complexity; who confidently rises beyond ideology, refusing to choose between East and West.
Subjects: East and West, Fiction, Short stories, Fiction, short stories (single author), Nouvelles, Fiction, general
