And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
Published 1928 · 700 pages · 197,833 words · about 13 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, War Fiction
How hard is And Quiet Flows the Don to read?
And Quiet Flows the Don scores 47 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. 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: 45 out of 100
- Cossack vocabulary, Russian terms in translation.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Epic prose following many characters.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- History and fate explored through Cossack life.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with Revolution and Civil War history.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- Multiple perspectives on same historical events.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The Don, Cossack life, Grigory carry symbolic weight.
- Ironic distance: 40 out of 100
- Sholokhov writes with evident Cossack sympathy.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- History unfolds; Grigory's fate continues.
- Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
- Epic spanning years with many characters.
How And Quiet Flows the Don is regarded
And Quiet Flows the Don holds a literary regard score of 81 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.