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Cover of Efuru

How long does it take to read Efuru?

Flora Nwapa

Efuru by Flora Nwapa takes about 5 hours 9 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 5 hours 9 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1966. 281 pages, about 77,275 words.

11 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 8 hours 35 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 9 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 13 minutes

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

About the book

"Appearing in 1966, Efuru was the first internationally published book, in English, by a Nigerian woman. Flora Nwapa (1931-1993) sets her story in a small village in colonial West Africa as she describes the youth, marriage, motherhood, and eventual personal epiphany of a young woman in rural Nigeria. The respected and beautiful protagonist, an independent-minded Ibo woman named Efuru, wishes to be a mother. Her eventual tragedy is that she is not able to marry or raise children successfully. Alone and childless, Efuru realizes she surely must have a higher calling and goes to the lake goddess of her tribe, Uhamiri, to discover the path she must follow. The work, a rich exploration of Nigerian village life and values, offers a realistic picture of gender issues in a patriarchal society as well as the struggles of a nation exploited by colonialism"--Page 4 of cover

Subjects: Nigerian fiction (English), Fiction, general

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