How long does it take to read Shame?
Shame by Annie Ernaux takes about 2 hours 25 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 25 minutes
An evening's read
First published 1997. 132 pages, about 36,300 words.
5 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 4 hours 2 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 25 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 31 minutes |
The page count is the median across 13 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon." Shame begins as the story of a twelve-year-old girl, but it is also about the storyteller, a mature woman, the author herself. The violent moment lives inside her. The trauma comes at a moment when she is still so close to her mother and father that the threatened act of violence is incomprehensible. It cuts through her like an axe. Over time, the memory cools until it is just a snapshot she carries in her purse, unchanging even after years have passed and the twelve-year-old girl has grown into an orgasmic woman and a writer. Years later the cut is still there, but her whole being has grown around it like a tree that has been struck by lightning and survived.
Subjects: Authors, French, Biography, French Authors, Childhood and youth, Authors, biography, Women, france
