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How long does it take to read The Fishermen?

Chigozie Obioma

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma takes about 5 hours 34 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 5 hours 34 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2015. 304 pages, about 83,600 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 17 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 34 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 29 minutes

The page count is the median across 13 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Four middle-class Nigerian brothers,Ikenna,,Boja, Obembe and Benjamin, decide to go fishing in a river. They do this without their mother's knowledge, carefully hiding away their fishing kit when they come home. Their career lasts six weeks before they are discovered by a neighbor, who tells their mother. One day at the river they meet the local oddball, Abulu,who has the power of prophecy, and who predicts that Ikenna, the eldest, will be killed by one of his brothers: by a "fisherman". It is from this simple, almost mythological conceit that Chigozie Obioma's debut novel grows, gaining complexity and power as it rises to its heartbreaking climax.

Subjects: Brothers, fiction, Nigeria, fiction, Fiction, general, Fiction, family life, general, Fiction, coming of age, Nigerian fiction (English)

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