How long does it take to read Orientalism?
Orientalism by Edward W. Said takes about 7 hours 20 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 7 hours 20 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1978. 400 pages, about 110,000 words.
15 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 12 hours 13 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 7 hours 20 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 35 minutes |
The page count is the median across 33 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Orientalism, published in 1978, introduces the idea of "Orientalism" to describe how the West habitually portrays Asia and North Africa with contempt. Said argues that Western scholarship about the East cannot be separated from the imperial societies that produced it, so much of it serves power rather than neutral inquiry. He treats Orientalism as an academic field, a style of thought dividing Orient from Occident, and a tool of domination. Drawing on literature and scholarship, he examines how stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims were built from texts, shaped Western knowledge, and justified colonial ambitions.
This summary was written by AI and checked by a second AI model. How these are chosen.
Subjects: Study and teaching, East and West, Foreign public opinion, Occidental, Imperialism, Foreign opinion, Occidental, Orientalism
