How long does it take to read The Ladies' Paradise?
The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola takes about 8 hours 30 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Book 11 of Les Rougon-Macquart
Previous: Pot-Bouille Next: La Joie de vivre
About 8 hours 30 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1883. 464 pages, about 127,600 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 14 hours 11 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 30 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 19 minutes |
The page count is the median across 55 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Translated into English titled "The Ladies Paradise". BBC did a series on Masterpiece Theater.The novel tells the story of Denise Baudu, a 20-year-old woman who comes to Paris with her younger brothers and begins working as a saleswoman at the department store Au Bonheur des Dames. You read about the inner workings of the store from the employees' perspective, including the 13-hour workdays, and the bare lodgings for the female staff. Many of the conflicts in the novel spring from each employee's struggle for advancement and the malicious infighting and gossip among the staff.Denise's story is played against the career of Octave Mouret, the owner of Au Bonheur des Dames, whose retail innovations and store expansions threaten the existence of all the neighborhood shops. There's also a love story.
Subjects: Department stores, Fiction, French fiction, Seduction, Women sales personnel, Sales personnel
