The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
Published 1997 · 90,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · History, Nonfiction
How hard is The Rape of Nanking to read?
The Rape of Nanking scores 20 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. 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: 28 out of 100
- Historical and military vocabulary. Accessible.
- Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
- Abstraction: 25 out of 100
- Concrete historical narrative.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Dense with documented atrocities and testimony.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Three-perspective structure.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Nanking as symbol of forgotten atrocity.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- The irony of a Nazi as humanitarian hero.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Justice was never fully served.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Three interleaved perspectives.
How The Rape of Nanking is regarded
The Rape of Nanking holds a literary regard score of 45 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.