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How long does it take to read The Ghost Writer?

Philip Roth

The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth takes about 3 hours 17 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 3 hours 17 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1979. 179 pages, about 49,225 words.

7 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 5 hours 28 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 3 hours 17 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 2 hours 3 minutes

The page count is the median across 15 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

The Ghost Writer introduces Nathan Zuckerman in the 1950s, a budding writer infatuated with the Great Books, discovering the contradictory claims of literature and experience while an overnight guest in the secluded New England farmhouse of his idol, E.I. Lonoff. At Lonoff's, Zuckerman meets Amy Bellette, a haunting young woman of indeterminate foreign background who turns out to be a former student of Lonoff's and who may also have been his mistress. Zuckerman, with his active, youthful imagination, wonders if she could be the paradigmatic victim of Nazi persecution. If she were, it might change his life. --From publisher description.

Subjects: Fiction, Jewish men, Nathan Zuckerman (Fictitious character), Jews, fiction, Novelists

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