How long does it take to read Survival?
Survival by Margaret Atwood takes about 5 hours 21 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 21 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1972. 292 pages, about 80,300 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 55 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 21 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 21 minutes |
The page count is the median across 14 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"'Survival' is the most startling book ever written about Canadian literature. It is ... a book of criticism, a manifesto, and a collection of personal and subversive remarks. Margaret Atwood begins by asking: 'what have been the central preoccupations of our poetry and fiction?' Her answer is twofold: 'survival and victims.' Atwood applies this thesis in twelve brilliant, witty and impassioned chapters. From Moodie to MacLennan to Blais, from Pratt to Purdy to Newlove, from Godfrey to Gibson, she lights up familiar books in wholly new perspectives." The themes are: survival; nature the monster; animal victims; early people (indians and eskimos); ancestral totems (explorers and settlers); family portrait: masks of the bear; failed sacrifices (the reluctant immigrant); the casual incident of death; the paralyzed artist; ice women vs. earth mothers; Quebec: burning mansions; and, jail-breaks and recreations.
Subjects: Intellectual life, History and criticism, Letterkunde, Littérature canadienne, Literatur, Histoire et critique
