How long does it take to read Tamas?
Tamas by Bhisham Sahni takes about 4 hours 20 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 20 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1988. 236 pages, about 64,900 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 13 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 20 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 42 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Set in a small-town frontier province in 1947, just before Partition, Tamas tells the story of a sweeper named Nathu who is bribed and deceived by a local Muslim politician to kill a pig, ostensibly for a veterinarian. The following morning, the carcass is discovered on the steps of the mosque and the town, already tension-ridden, erupts. Enraged Muslims massacre scores of Hindus and Sikhs, who, in turn, kill every Muslim they can find. Finally, the area's British administrators call out the army to prevent further violence. The killings stop but nothing can erase the awful memories from the minds of the survivors, nor will the various communities ever trust one another again. The events described in Tamas are based on true accounts of the riots of 1947 that Sahni was a witness to in Rawalpindi, and this new and sensitive translation by the author himself resurrects chilling memories of the consequences of communalism which are of immense relevance even today.
Subjects: Fiction, India, fiction, Fiction, media tie-in, Communalism, Religious aspects, Riots
