How long does it take to read Remembrance of Things Past?
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust takes about 9 hours 10 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 9 hours 10 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1919. 500 pages, about 137,500 words.
19 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 15 hours 17 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 9 hours 10 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 44 minutes |
The page count is the median across 81 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Proust's seven-volume novel follows an unnamed narrator who looks back on his childhood and his path into adulthood in high-society France at the turn of the twentieth century. Raised partly in the countryside town of Combray, he grows up, learns about art, moves through fashionable society and falls in love. A taste of cake dipped in tea unlocks long-buried memories, and involuntary memory becomes the work's central theme. Around him move family servants, aristocrats, artists, hostesses and friends, among them the elegant Charles Swann, whose own love story is told within the narrator's account.
This summary was written by AI and checked by a second AI model. How these are chosen.
Subjects: Fiction, Social life and customs, Villages, France, Obsessive-compulsive disorder, Social conditions
