How long does it take to read English Passengers?
Matthew Kneale
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale takes about 8 hours 28 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 28 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2000. 462 pages, about 127,050 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 14 hours 7 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 28 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 18 minutes |
The page count is the median across 12 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"English Passengers is an old-fashioned book in the best sense: epic in scale, crammed with outsize characters, set in a long-ago time and a faraway place... 'A-'"--Entertainment Weekly"Robust and rollicking...unforgettable...It's tough to pull off a memorable epic, but Kneale has done it. So get comfortable, and be prepared to enter a fascinating world."--New York PostWhen Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his band of rum smugglers from the Isle of Man have most of their contraband--but not all--confiscated by British Customs, they are forced to put their ship Sincerity up for charter. The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other side of the globe.The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson believes the Garden of Eden was on the island of Tasmania. His traveling partner, Dr. Thomas Potter, unbeknownst to Wilson, is developing a revolutionary, and sinister, thesis of his own, about the races of men. And these passengers are perhaps only slightly more odd than the crew itself, a diverse and lively bunch better equipped to entertain one another than to steer Sincerity around Cape Horn and across the Indian Ocean. Yet they set sail, pointed southward and bound for a thrilling, epic romp across the high seas and cultures of the nineteenth century.Meanwhile, an aboriginal in Tasmania named Peevay recounts his people's struggles against the invading British, who prove as lethal in their good intentions as in their cruelty. This is no Eden but a world of hunting parties and colonial ethnic cleansing. As the English passengers haplessly approach Peevay's land, their bizarre notions ever more painfully at odds with reality, we know a mighty collision is looming.Full of dangerous humor, English Passengers combines wit, adventure, and harrowing historical detail in a mesmerizing display of storytelling. Narrated by over twenty different characters, each one so distinct that the reader has the sense of a story not so much told as dazzlingly peopled, Matthew…
Subjects: Tasmanian aborigines, Fiction, Aboriginal Tasmanians, History, Fiction, historical, Great britain, fiction
