The Vatican Cellars by André Gide

Published 1914 · 74,793 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is The Vatican Cellars to read?

The Vatican Cellars scores 67 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: 68 out of 100
French in translation, Gide.
Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
Complex satire.
Abstraction: 72 out of 100
Free act, religion, fraud.
Information density: 62 out of 100
Vatican intrigue.
Narrative indirection: 68 out of 100
Multiple perspectives.
Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
Cellars, Pope, freedom.
Ironic distance: 75 out of 100
Satirical throughout.
Resolution withholding: 60 out of 100
Ironic resolution.
Structural complexity: 65 out of 100
Multiple storylines.

How The Vatican Cellars is regarded

The Vatican Cellars holds a literary regard score of 81 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

André Gide