Translated Accounts by James Kelman

Published 2001 · 328 pages · 82,000 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is Translated Accounts to read?

Translated Accounts scores 69 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: 65 out of 100
Kelman experimental.
Sentence structure: 72 out of 100
Broken, translated prose.
Abstraction: 72 out of 100
State violence, testimony.
Information density: 55 out of 100
Unnamed country.
Narrative indirection: 78 out of 100
Fragmented testimonies.
Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
Translation, loss.
Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
Political distance.
Resolution withholding: 72 out of 100
No resolution.
Structural complexity: 75 out of 100
Fragmented accounts.

How Translated Accounts is regarded

Translated Accounts holds a literary regard score of 53 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

James Kelman