How long does it take to read Personal Matter?
Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe takes about 3 hours 2 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 2 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1970. 165 pages, about 45,375 words.
7 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 5 hours 3 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 2 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 53 minutes |
The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Kenzaburō Ōe, the winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, is internationally acclaimed as one of the most important and influential post-World War 2 Writers, known for his powerful accounts of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and his own struggle to come to terms with a mentally handicapped son. The Swedish Academy lauded Ōe for his "poetic force (that} creates an imagined world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today." His most personal book, A Personal Matter is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage whose utopian dream is shattered when his wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child.
Subjects: Japan, Nobel Laureates, Cultural
