How many pages is Heart of Darkness?

About 228 pages, though editions of a book this old vary a great deal — which is why its reading time comes from the complete text instead: 38,515 words, about 2½ hrs of reading at an average pace.

How long is the Heart of Darkness audiobook?

About 4½ hrs, estimated from the 39,000 words at a typical narration pace of 150 words a minute. Real editions vary by narrator, usually by well under an hour.

Find a copy Listen on Audible · ≈4½ hrs

Heart of Darkness

Name: Heart of Darkness
Author: Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

2½ hrsto read

4.5worth it

At your speed≈ 2½ hrs

Pages228

Audiobook≈ 4½ hrs

Times shown for 250 words a minute (average)

The complete text runs to 38,515 words, counted word for word. At an average 250 words a minute that is 2½ hrs — a day's reading.

Readers on Hardcover rate it 3.35 out of 5, from 1,154 ratings.

Worth-it score 4.5/10 — A hard sell for the time. Readers 4.0 (Hardcover's 3.35★ from 1,154 ratings) + length 0.5 = 4.5. How the score works →

How long does it take to read Heart of Darkness?

The complete text of Heart of Darkness runs to 38,515 words — about 228 pages in the edition we list. How long that takes depends on how fast you read:

Estimated reading time for Heart of Darkness at three reading speeds.
Your pace	Words per minute	Time to finish
Slow	175	3½ hrs
Average	250	2½ hrs
Fast	400	1½ hrs

Counted word for word from the complete public-domain text on Project Gutenberg, so these times don't depend on any one edition's page count. Most adults read between 200 and 300 words a minute — set your own pace and every time on the site adjusts. Prefer to listen? At a typical narration pace of 150 words a minute the audiobook runs about 4½ hrs — an estimate from the word count, since narrators vary.

Common questions

How long does it take to read Heart of Darkness?: About 2½ hrs at an average reading speed of 250 words per minute. The complete text of Heart of Darkness runs to 38,515 words — so at a slower 175 wpm it is nearer 3½ hrs, and at 400 wpm closer to 1½ hrs.
How many pages is Heart of Darkness?: About 228 pages, though editions of a book this old vary a great deal — which is why its reading time comes from the complete text instead: 38,515 words, about 2½ hrs of reading at an average pace.
Is Heart of Darkness worth reading?: We score it 4.5 out of 10 for the time it takes — a hard sell for the time. Readers on Hardcover rate it 3.35 out of 5 from 1,154 ratings, which counts for 4.0; at about 2½ hrs at an average pace it earns +0.5 for being short.
How long is the Heart of Darkness audiobook?: About 4½ hrs, estimated from the 39,000 words at a typical narration pace of 150 words a minute. Real editions vary by narrator, usually by well under an hour.

From the publisher

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames.…

Joseph Conrad is one of the greatest English writers, and Heart of Darkness is considered his best. His readers are brought to face our psychological selves to answer, ‘Who is the true savage?’. Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century’s most enduring works of fiction. Written several years after Joseph Conrad’s grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity.

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