The Mulberry Empire by Philip Hensher

Published 2002 · 520 pages · 130,000 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · History, Literary Fiction

How hard is The Mulberry Empire to read?

The Mulberry Empire scores 56 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
Afghan, Victorian.
Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
Hensher's elaborate prose.
Abstraction: 58 out of 100
Empire, Afghanistan.
Information density: 62 out of 100
First Afghan War.
Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
Multiple perspectives.
Symbolic density: 58 out of 100
Mulberry, empire.
Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
Colonial critique.
Resolution withholding: 52 out of 100
Historical outcome.
Structural complexity: 58 out of 100
Multiple viewpoints.

How The Mulberry Empire is regarded

The Mulberry Empire holds a literary regard score of 56 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

Philip Hensher