How long does it take to read The Shadow-line?
a confession
The Shadow-line by Joseph Conrad takes about 2 hours 37 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 37 minutes
An evening's read
First published 1917. 143 pages, about 39,325 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 22 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 37 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 38 minutes |
The page count is the median across 147 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
A young and inexperienced sea captain finds that his first command leaves him with a ship stranded in tropical seas and a crew smitten with fever. As he wrestles with his conscience and with the increasing sense of isolation that he experiences, the captain crosses the 'shadow-line' between youth and adulthood. In many ways an autobiographical narrative, Conrad's novella was written at the start of the Great War when his son Borys was at the Western Front, and can be seen as an attempt to open humanity's eyes to the qualities needed to face evil and destruction.
Subjects: Ship captains, Fiction, English Adventure stories, Conrad, Joseph, in fiction, Sea stories, Maritime fiction
