About 5 h 45 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 12 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
In 1943, Major Victor Joppolo takes charge of the Sicilian town of Adano for the Allied military government, hoping to earn its residents’ trust after years of Fascist rule. Food and work are urgent needs, but the townspeople also want their centuries-old bell replaced after its confiscation and destruction for weapons. Joppolo takes their request seriously as he tries to put democratic principles into everyday practice.
Reader notes
Comic encounters between soldiers and townspeople alternate with the practical problems of occupation. The literary war novel is humane and openly moral in its argument, treating the business of local government as a test of what liberation means.
How it reads
Writing style
Direct · Journalistic
Tone
Earnest · Humorous · Satirical · Warm
Structure
Linear
Driven by
Character · Ideas · Relationships
Point of view
Third person, omniscient
Setting
Adano, Sicily, Italy (fictional town)
Reading complexity
Writing
2 / 5
Ideas
3 / 5
Structure
2 / 5
Background knowledge
2 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
Writing
How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas
How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure
How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge
Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity
Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
Community
Freedom
Justice
Power
War
Content notes
Violence
Mild
Sexual content
Mild
Swearing
Strong
Substance use
Mild
Abuse
None
Self-harm or suicide
None
Standing and awards
Highly regarded
Pulitzer Prize for Novel (pre-1948), 1945
Questions readers ask
How long is it?
288 pages in the Vintage 1988 paperback edition.
Which edition is shown here?
Vintage · 1988 · Paperback. ISBN 9780394756950.
How long does it take to read A Bell for Adano?
About 5 hours 45 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 288-page Vintage edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
John Hersey
John Hersey was an American journalist, novelist, and professor whose work helped establish literary reportage as a serious form. He adapted the scene-making and narrative continuity of fiction to factual accounts while keeping close to individual experience. Hiroshima, built from interviews with six survivors of the atomic bombing, is the clearest expression of this method: historical catastrophe is rendered through observed lives and lasting consequences. His fiction also approached war from within; Of Men and War presents soldiers’ perspectives rather than a correspondent’s overview. Across both forms, Hersey distinguished himself by replacing abstraction with witness, using direct narrative to make large events humanly intelligible.
