Boussole by Mathias Énard
Published 2015 · 433 pages · 108,250 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Boussole to read?
Boussole scores 61 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: 60 out of 100
- Orientalist musicology vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
- Long, erudite, digressive sentences.
- Abstraction: 70 out of 100
- East-West cultural exchange and meaning.
- Information density: 70 out of 100
- Dense with musicological and cultural detail.
- Narrative indirection: 60 out of 100
- One night of digressive memory.
- Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
- The compass, Orient carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Énard maintains intellectual distance.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Night ends; questions persist.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- Single night with extensive digression.
How Boussole is regarded
Boussole holds a literary regard score of 63 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.