How long does it take to read Jacques the Fatalist and His Master?
Denis Diderot
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master by Denis Diderot takes about 5 hours 18 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 18 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1946. 289 pages, about 79,475 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 50 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 18 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 19 minutes |
The page count is the median across 33 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"Jacques the Fatalist is Diderot's answer to the problem of existence. If human beings are determined by their genes and their environment, how can they claim to be free to want or do anything? Where are Jacques and his Master going? Are they simply occupying space, living mechanically until they die, believing erroneously that they are in charge of their Destiny? Diderot intervenes to cheat our expectations of what fiction should be and do, and behaves like a provocative, ironic, and unfailingly entertaining master of revels which finally show why Fate is not to be equated with doom." "In the introduction to this new translation, David Coward explains the philosophical basis of Diderot's fascination with Fate and shows why Jacques the Fatalist pioneers techniques of action which, two centuries on, novelists still regard as experimental."--Jacket.
Subjects: Simone LeCointre, Ontology in fiction, Critique et interprétation, Fiction, Fate and fatalism, Free will and determinism in fiction
