The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić

Published 1945 · 314 pages · 133,261 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

How hard is The Bridge on the Drina to read?

The Bridge on the Drina scores 57 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: 55 out of 100
Serbo-Croatian, Ottoman.
Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
Andrić's clear prose.
Abstraction: 60 out of 100
History, cultures, fate.
Information density: 62 out of 100
Centuries of history.
Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
Chronicle structure.
Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
Bridge, cultures.
Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
Historical perspective.
Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
Bridge destroyed.
Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
Multi-century scope.

How The Bridge on the Drina is regarded

The Bridge on the Drina holds a literary regard score of 85 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

Ivo Andrić