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How long does it take to read The Year of the Flood?

Margaret Atwood

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood takes about 8 hours 13 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

Book 2 of MaddAddam Series

Previous: Oryx and Crake Next: MaddAddam

About 8 hours 13 minutes

A week or two of reading

First published 2009. 448 pages, about 123,200 words.

17 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 13 hours 41 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 8 hours 13 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 5 hours 8 minutes

The page count is the median across 30 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood. The Year of the Flood is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power. The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners--a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life--has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible. Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers... Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away... By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.

Subjects: Fiction, Regression (Civilization), Environmental disasters, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Dystopias, Genetic engineering

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