Pharaoh by Bolesław Prus
Published 1897 · 185,000 words · about 16 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Political Fiction, Classic Literature
How hard is Pharaoh to read?
Pharaoh scores 63 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 66 out of 100
- Egyptological terminology, court and temple hierarchy, and archaic ceremonial diction sustained throughout.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- Formal nineteenth-century narrative prose with long ceremonial passages and extensive political dialogue.
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- A treatise on the mechanics of political power in the form of a historical novel, with long stretches of pure statecraft argument.
- Information density: 80 out of 100
- A reconstructed state apparatus with its finances, priesthood, army, foreign policy and religion, plus a large named cast and detailed geography.
- Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
- The reader is largely restricted to Ramses's limited view and, like him, discovers the priests' countermoves after they have worked.
- Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
- The eclipse used as a weapon, the temple labyrinth and the sealed treasury operate as figures for information as power.
- Ironic distance: 76 out of 100
- Every plan the young pharaoh conceives has already been factored into the priests' calculations, and the novel lets him feel decisive for four hundred pages.
- Resolution withholding: 54 out of 100
- The reform fails and the priesthood wins, but the closing chapter reveals that Herhor intends to enact Ramses's programme himself, unsettling the whole verdict.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- Chronological narration in three volumes with an epilogue, alternating court, temple and campaign settings.
How Pharaoh is regarded
Pharaoh holds a literary regard score of 72 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.