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How long does it take to read The Prestige?

Christopher Priest

The Prestige by Christopher Priest takes about 7 hours 2 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 7 hours 2 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1901. 384 pages, about 105,600 words.

15 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 11 hours 44 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 7 hours 2 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 24 minutes

The page count is the median across 24 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Two 19th century stage illusionists, the aristocratic Rupert Angier and the working-class Alfred Borden, engage in a bitter and deadly feud; the effects are still being felt by their respective families a hundred years later. Working in the gaslight-and-velvet world of Victorian music halls, they prowl edgily in the background of each other's shadowy life, driven to the extremes by a deadly combination of obsessive secrecy and insatiable curiosity. At the heart of the row is an amazing illusion they both perform during their stage acts. The secret of the magic is simple, and the reader is in on it almost from the start, but to the antagonists the real mystery lies deeper. Both have something more to hide than the mere workings of a trick.

Subjects: Magicians, Journalists, Fiction, Fiction, general, England, fiction, Journalists, fiction

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