How long does it take to read The Thirst for Annihilation?
The Thirst for Annihilation by Nick Land takes about 4 hours 33 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 33 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1990. 248 pages, about 68,200 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 35 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 33 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 51 minutes |
The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
An important literary and philosophical figure, Georges Bataille has had a significant influence on other French writers, such as Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard. The Thirst for Annihilation is the first book in English to respond to Bataille's writings. In no way, though, is Nick Land's book an attempt to appropriate Bataille's writings to a secular intelligibility or to compromise with the aridity of academic discourse - rather, it is written as a communion. Theoretical issues in philosophy, sociology, psychodynamics, politics and poetry are discussed, but only as stepping stones into the deep water of textual sacrifice where words pass over into the broken voice of death. Cultural modernity is diagnosed down to its Kantian bedrock with its transcendental philosophy of the object, but Bataille's writings cut violently across this tightly disciplined reading to reveal the strong underlying currents that bear us towards chaos and dissolution - the violent impulse to escape, the thirst for annihilation.
Subjects: Influence, Philosophy, Nihilism (philosophy), Philosophie, Nihilisme dans la littérature, Athéisme dans la littérature
