How long does it take to read The Third Policeman?
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien takes about 3 hours 40 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 40 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1967. 200 pages, about 55,000 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 7 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 40 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 18 minutes |
The page count is the median across 21 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe," he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him. The last of O'Brien's novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O'Brien's other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Best of Myles, The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses.
Subjects: Fiction, Murder, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Fiction, mystery & detective, general, Ireland, fiction
