Silence is 294 pages, or approximately 68,000 words. At an average reading pace, it takes about 6 hours to read.

Is Silence difficult to read?

Silence has a difficulty score of 7.0 out of 10, making it quite demanding. Key factors include vocabulary complexity (4.8/10), sentence structure (4.8/10), abstract concepts (7.6/10).

What genre is Silence?

Silence is categorized as Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Religious Fiction. It was published in 1966 by Shūsaku Endō.

Is Silence worth reading?

Silence by Shūsaku Endō is widely considered a masterpiece with a literary regard score of 8.0/10. Visit ReadingRate for the full difficulty analysis and reading guide.

When was Silence published?

Silence was published in 1966 by Shūsaku Endō.

Silence by Shūsaku Endō

Name: Silence
Author: Shūsaku Endō

Published 1966 · 294 pages · 68,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Religious Fiction

How hard is Silence to read?

Silence scores 70 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: 48 out of 100: Johnston's translation is clear and plain, with Catholic liturgical vocabulary and a handful of Japanese terms — fumie, kakure kirishitan, bakufu — carried over and glossed briefly.
Sentence structure: 48 out of 100: Straightforward prose that shifts between the formal register of Rodrigues's letters and simpler third-person narration, with no grammatical obstacles.
Abstraction: 76 out of 100: The novel is a sustained theological argument about the silence of God, the meaning of apostasy and whether Christianity can be transplanted, conducted through interrogations and letters rather than through incident.
Information density: 58 out of 100: The Tokugawa persecution, the Shimabara rebellion, the Jesuit mission's history and the mechanics of the fumie are all given, but through dramatic scenes rather than exposition.
Narrative indirection: 72 out of 100: The book opens with an editorial preface, becomes Rodrigues's letters, shifts to third person when he can no longer write, and ends in a Dutch factor's diary and an official's ledger, so the protagonist's interior life is progressively withdrawn from the reader.
Symbolic density: 82 out of 100: The worn bronze face of the fumie, the sea that swallows the martyrs at Tomogi, the recurring silence, the cicadas, and Kichijirō as a Judas who cannot stop asking for absolution carry the novel's whole argument.
Ironic distance: 70 out of 100: The priest who came to imitate Christ's suffering is denied it; the weak, contemptible Kichijirō turns out to be the book's most faithful character; the act of apostasy is presented as the one genuinely Christlike thing Rodrigues does.
Resolution withholding: 84 out of 100: Whether Rodrigues keeps his faith after stepping on the image is left deliberately unsettled, and the closing official documents describe an apostate priest living out his life in Japanese custody without a word about what he believes.
Structural complexity: 66 out of 100: Four distinct narrative modes — editorial preface, epistolary chapters, third-person narration, and appended Dutch and Japanese records — each further from Rodrigues than the last.

How Silence is regarded

Silence holds a literary regard score of 80 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.

About the author

Shūsaku Endō