How long is it?
400 pages in the Simon and Schuster 1982 hardcover edition.
Fiction · Novel · Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction
Schindler's List
Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 50 / 100Moderate
- Length
- 400 pagesSimon and Schuster · 1982
- Reading time
- 8 hat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 5 / 5
About 8 h · at 30 minutes a day, about 16 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Oskar Schindler runs an enamelware factory in Nazi-occupied Kraków, employing Jewish workers threatened by deportation and murder. A Nazi Party member fond of money, drink and influential company, he uses his connections to negotiate their protection. Their survival requires dealings with officials who control the ghetto and Płaszów labor camp, where commandant Amon Goeth exercises arbitrary power over prisoners.
Reader notes
Drawing on survivors' testimony, the historical novel follows individual lives and the practical arrangements behind the rescue in a detailed documentary narrative. Nazi violence and abuse are described plainly, and the accumulation of particulars can be harrowing.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Descriptive · Direct
- Tone
- Bleak · Reflective · Tense
- Structure
- Linear
- Driven by
- Character · Plot
- Point of view
- Third person, omniscient
- Setting
- Kraków, Poland · Płaszów forced-labor camp
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 3 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 3 / 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
- Morality
- Oppression
- Power
- Survival
Content notes
- Violence
- Strong
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Strong
- Abuse
- Strong
- Self-harm or suicide
- Mild
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Simon and Schuster · 1982 · Hardcover. ISBN 9780671449773.
How long does it take to read Schindler's List?
About 8 hours at 50 pages an hour, based on the 400-page Simon and Schuster edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally is an Australian novelist, playwright, and essayist whose fiction often reworks historical material with modern psychology and style. Schindler’s Ark shows this method in a novel drawn from documented people and events, with reconstructed scenes and dialogue used where the surviving record is incomplete. Keneally keeps its focus on Oskar Schindler’s contradictions: a pleasure-seeking profiteer and Nazi Party member who undertakes to save Polish Jews. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, told through the perspective of an exploited Aboriginal man driven to rage, raises a different question about Keneally’s use of historical voices. He later said that he would no longer presume to write in the voice of an Aboriginal person and would instead tell such a story through a white character.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Simon and Schuster
- Publication year
- 1982
- Format
- Hardcover
- Pages
- 400
- ISBN
- 9780671449773
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 1982
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction · Historical fiction · Biographical fiction · War fiction
- Editions
- 30
- Languages
- 8 (German, English, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, Unspecified, Chinese)
The catalog does not yet include a matching edition. Details may differ between editions.