How long does it take to read The Noise of Time?
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes takes about 3 hours 21 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 21 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2016. 183 pages, about 50,325 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 36 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 21 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 6 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich--Julian Barnes's first novel since his best-selling, Booker Prize-winning The Sense of an Ending. 1936: Shostakovich, just thirty, fears for his livelihood and his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has taken a sudden interest in his work and denounced his latest opera. Now, certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), he reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, various women and wives, his children all of those hanging in the balance of his fate. And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, for years to come he will be held fast under the thumb of despotism: made to represent Soviet values at a cultural conference in New York City, forced into joining the Party, and compelled, constantly, to weigh appeasing those in power against the integrity of his music. Barnes elegantly guides us through the trajectory of Shostakovich's career, at the same time illuminating the tumultuous evolution of the Soviet Union. The result is both a stunning portrait of a relentlessly fascinating man and a brilliant meditation on the meaning of art and its place in society"--
Subjects: Soviet union, fiction, Fiction, biographical, Fiction, historical, Composers, fiction, Composers, Politics and government
