How long does it take to read The Pledge?
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
The Pledge by Friedrich Dürrenmatt takes about 2 hours 56 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 56 minutes
An evening's read
First published 1959. 160 pages, about 44,000 words.
6 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 4 hours 53 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 56 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 50 minutes |
The page count is the median across 4 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Set in a small town in Switzerland, The Pledge centers around the murder of a young girl and the detective who promises the victim’s mother he will find the perpetrator. After deciding the wrong man has been arrested for the crime, the detective lays a trap for the real killer—with all the patience of a master fisherman. But cruel turns of plot conspire to make him pay dearly for his pledge. Here Friedrich Dürrenmatt conveys his brilliant ear for dialogue and a devastating sense of timing and suspense. Joel Agee’s skilled translation effectively captures the various voices in the original, as well as its chilling conclusion. One of Dürrenmatt’s most diabolically imagined and constructed novels, The Pledge was adapted for the screen in 2000 in a film directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson.
