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Cover of Saturday

How long does it take to read Saturday?

Ian McEwan

Saturday by Ian McEwan takes about 5 hours 39 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 5 hours 39 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2004. 308 pages, about 84,700 words.

12 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 9 hours 25 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 39 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 32 minutes

The page count is the median across 53 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

From the pen of a master -- the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize--winning author of Atonement -- comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man -- a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before.On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne's day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him -- with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive.From the Hardcover edition.

Subjects: Protest movements, Criminals, Traffic accidents, Political fiction, Fiction, Middle-aged men

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