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Cover of The Testaments

How long does it take to read The Testaments?

Margaret Atwood

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood takes about 8 hours 43 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

Book 2 of The Handmaid's Tale

Previous: The Handmaid's Tale

About 8 hours 43 minutes

A week or two of reading

First published 2019. 475 pages, about 130,625 words. Written for young adults.

18 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 14 hours 31 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 8 hours 43 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 5 hours 27 minutes

The page count is the median across 23 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

15 years after the sons of Jacob seized power in the USA and became Gilead. The story is told from three female viewpoints; Daisy, Agnes and Lydia. Daisy struggles with coming to the realization of her past and who she really is, Agnes tells her story and life in Gilead, and Lydia contemplates her life and decisions made. When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her--freedom, prison or death. With The Testaments, the wait is over. Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story more than fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead. In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades. "Dear Readers: Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in." --Margaret Atwood

Content warnings (AI-checked, may be incomplete)
  • violence
  • sexual content
  • abuse

How these are chosen

Subjects: Science Fiction, Young adult fiction, Dystopian Fiction, Fiction, dystopian, Fiction, fantasy, general, Surrogate mothers

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