The Last of the Just by André Schwarz-Bart
Published 1959 · 92,000 words · about 10 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
How hard is The Last of the Just to read?
The Last of the Just scores 59 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: 58 out of 100
- Jewish and French vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Epic historical prose.
- Abstraction: 65 out of 100
- Jewish suffering and faith.
- Information density: 62 out of 100
- Centuries of history.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Generational saga.
- Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
- Just man tradition.
- Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
- Tragic engagement.
- Resolution withholding: 58 out of 100
- Holocaust as culmination.
- Structural complexity: 58 out of 100
- Epic generational scope.
How The Last of the Just is regarded
The Last of the Just holds a literary regard score of 49 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.