How long does it take to read The Pagoda?
Patricia Powell
The Pagoda by Patricia Powell takes about 4 hours 30 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 30 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1998. 245 pages, about 67,375 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 29 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 30 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 48 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Lowe, the Chinese immigrant, is in his fifties - the owner of a small shop in an impoverished plantation village, and the guardian of a secret that is gradually revealed. Writing to a long-estranged daughter, Lowe tells her what happened during their years apart - a tale of exile from China, of estrangement from family, of shipboard adventures, of an unwanted pregnancy, of the arrangement that was made to avoid a possible scandal, of the three decades of living as man and wife with a light-skinned black woman named Sylvie. It is a story of the destruction of a world: the burning of Lowe's shop. It describes Lowe's dream of building a Pagoda - a school where Chinese workers might learn about their history and become a part of Jamaican life.
Subjects: Fiction, Immigrants, Chinese, Plantation life, History, Fiction, general
