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Cover of The Pearl That Broke It's Shell

How long does it take to read The Pearl That Broke It's Shell?

Nadia Hashimi

The Pearl That Broke It's Shell by Nadia Hashimi takes about 8 hours 17 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 8 hours 17 minutes

A week or two of reading

First published 2014. 452 pages, about 124,300 words.

17 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 13 hours 49 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 8 hours 17 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 5 hours 11 minutes

The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and chaperone her older sisters. But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-aunt, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way. Crisscrossing in time, The Pearl the Broke Its Shell interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share similar destinies. But what will happen once Rahima is of marriageable age? Will Shekiba always live as a man? And if Rahima cannot adapt to life as a bride, how will she survive?

Subjects: Fiction, general, Afghanistan, fiction, Impersonation, Children of drug addicts, Freedom, Survival

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