How long does it take to read Heart of Darkness?
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad takes about 2 hours 34 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 34 minutes
An evening's read
First published 1899. 140 pages, about 38,500 words.
6 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 4 hours 17 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 34 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 36 minutes |
The page count is the median across 553 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. Joseph Conrad is one of the greatest English writers, and Heart of Darkness is considered his best. His readers are brought to face our psychological selves to answer, ‘Who is the true savage?’. Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century’s most enduring works of fiction. Written several years after Joseph Conrad’s grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity.
Subjects: Fiction, Romance, Degeneration, Description and travel, Diaries, Sailors
