How long does it take to read The Great Indian Novel?
The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor takes about 7 hours 45 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 7 hours 45 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1989. 423 pages, about 116,325 words.
16 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 12 hours 56 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 7 hours 45 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 51 minutes |
The page count is the median across 11 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Shashi Tharoor's satirical novel of 1989 takes the ancient Indian epic the Mahabharata and moves it into the modern era. Real figures from the independence movement and the decades that follow, up to the 1970s, appear as characters from the myth, so the old dynastic quarrel between related families becomes a story of rivalry within the emerging Indian democracy. An irreverent, cantankerous narrator tells it, poking fun at revered leaders. Like the epic, the book has eighteen sections, and it plays on puns and references to other writing about India.
This summary was written by AI and checked by a second AI model. How these are chosen.
Subjects: Adaptations, Fiction, History, Mahābhārata, Fiction, historical, general, India, fiction
