How long does it take to read Po-on?
a novel
Po-on by F. Sionil José takes about 4 hours 54 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 54 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1984. 267 pages, about 73,425 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 10 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 54 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 4 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
With Dusk (originally published in the Philippines as Po-on), F. Sionil Jose begins his five-novel Rosales Saga. Set in the 1880s, Dusk records the exile of a tenant family from its village and the new life it attempts to make in the small town of Rosales. Here commences the epic tale of a family unwillingly thrown into the turmoil of history. But this is more than a historical novel; it is also the eternal story of man's tortured search for true faith and the larger meaning of existence. Jose carefully begins to paint a portrait of his country, showing the terrible physical and emotional hardships the people endure as the Philippines is transformed by the "liberation" from Spanish rule and by the oppression that continues, even as the Americans take over. Still, far from drawing a picture of hopelessness, Jose' has achieved a fiction of extraordinary scope and passion, a book as meaningful to Philippine literature as One Hundred Years of Solitude is to Latin American literature.
Subjects: History, Fiction, Fiction, historical, general, Philippines, fiction
