How long does it take to read The History of the Siege of Lisbon?
The History of the Siege of Lisbon by José Saramago takes about 6 hours 4 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 4 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1989. 331 pages, about 91,025 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 7 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 4 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 48 minutes |
The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Raimundo Silva, a proofreader at a Portuguese publishing house, takes it upon himself to alter a key word in a text to make it read that in 1147 the king of Portugal reconquered Lisbon from the Saracens without any assistance from the Crusaders. His revision of a signal episode in Portuguese history unexpectedly and inexplicably wins the heart of his supervisor, Maria Sara, a woman of unwavering conviction. Rather than fire him as she ought to, Maria encourages Raimundo to rewrite the history of the siege of Lisbon in the grand style of a historical romance. Around this seemingly minor episode Jose Saramago constructs a broad, multifaceted tableau involving meditations on historiography and the uses and abuses of language, a parable of life under authoritarian rule, and a bittersweet romance.
Subjects: Fiction, History, Proofreading, Sieges, Lisbon (portugal), history, Portugal, history
