How long does it take to read The Lamp of Umm Hashim?
Yaḥyá Ḥaqqī
The Lamp of Umm Hashim by Yaḥyá Ḥaqqī takes about 1 hour 37 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 1 hour 37 minutes
An evening's read
First published 2004. 88 pages, about 24,200 words.
4 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 2 hours 41 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 1 hour 37 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 1 minute |
The page count is the median across 1 edition, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Together with such figures as the scholar Taha Hussein, the playwright Tawfik al-Hakim, the short story writer Mahmoud Teymour and―of course―Naguib Mahfouz, Yahya Hakki belongs to that distinguished band of early writers who, midway through the last century, under the influence of Western literature, began to practice genres of creative writing that were new to the traditions of classical Arabic. The story deals with the people of Upper Egypt, for whom the writer had a special understanding and affection. It is, however, for the title story (in fact, more of a novella) of this collection that the writer is best known. Recounting the difficulties faced by a young man who is sent to England to study medicine and who then returns to Egypt to pit his new ideals against tradition, ‘‘The Lamp of Umm Hashim’’ was the first of several works in Arabic to deal with the way in which an individual tries to come to terms with two divergent cultures.
Subjects: Arabic Short stories, Fiction, Short stories, Arabic, Social life and customs, Fiction, short stories (single author)
