How long does it take to read History?
History by Elsa Morante takes about 11 hours 33 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 11 hours 33 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1974. 630 pages, about 173,250 words.
24 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 19 hours 15 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 11 hours 33 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 7 hours 13 minutes |
The page count is the median across 34 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The central character in this powerful and unforgiving novel is Ida Mancuso, a schoolteacher whose husband has died and whose feckless teenage son treats the war as his playground. A German soldier on his way to North Africa rapes her, falls in love with her, and leaves her pregnant with a boy whose survival becomes Ida's passion. Around these two other characters come and go, each caught up by the war which is like a river in flood. We catch glimpses of bombing raids, street crimes, a cattle car from which human cries emerge, an Italian soldier succumbing to frostbite on the Russian front, the dumb endurance of peasants who have lived their whole lives with nothing and now must get by with less than nothing.
Subjects: Fiction, Fiction, historical, Rome, fiction, Fiction, historical, general, Rome (City), Italy
