The Story of My Experiments with Truth: reading level, length and free edition

Name: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
Author: Mahatma Gandhi

The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi is an autobiography in English, in English translation. Our team rates it C1. It runs to 173,864 words with 10,830 different word forms, about 14–29 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Standard Ebooks.

By the Readlang Mobile team (an independent app, not affiliated with readlang.com). Updated 31 October 2026.

Cover of The Story of My Experiments with Truth

Author: Mahatma Gandhi
Language: English
Level: C1
Form: autobiography
Words: 173,864
Different word forms: 10,830
Forms for 95% / 98%: 4,476 / 7,353
Reading time: 14–29 h
Free edition: Standard Ebooks

Gandhi relates his life experiences from his birth in Gujarat in 1869 through the Indian National Congress of 1915.

Is The Story of My Experiments with Truth right for your level?

To recognise 95% of the running words in The Story of My Experiments with Truth, you need its 4,476 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 7,353. The median English C1 book in our table needs 4,633 forms for 95%, so by this measure the book is typical for its level: number 5 of 11, easiest first.

A word form is any spelling that appears in the text, so “walk” and “walked” count twice, and names count too. These numbers are a guide to how much vocabulary the book asks for, not a test. The level itself was set by hand by our team. Before you commit, read one page of the free edition and count the words you do not know: the one-page test takes two minutes.

Which words should you know before you start?

These are the words that The Story of My Experiments with Truth uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 309 English books in our library; the number is how many times each appears. Names of people and places are left out. Learning a handful of them first makes the opening chapters easier.

satyagraha 105
experiments 81
meat 80
milk 74
passengers 71
learnt 63
resolution 57
diet 56
teacher 54
community 53
brahmacharya 49
training 48
conference 48
press 48
contact 47

How does it begin?

It was by a fortunate accident that the privilege of translating into English, for Young India , the Story of My Experiments with Truth , or Gandhiji’s Autobiography, as it was being published in Navajivan from week to week, fell to me.

From the Standard Ebooks edition, which is in the public domain. If this paragraph already feels slow, try a book one level lower.

How long does it take to read?

Hours to read *The Story of My Experiments with Truth* (173,864 words) at four reading speeds.
Words	100 wpm	150 wpm	200 wpm	250 wpm
173,864	29 h	19 h	14 h	12 h

Learners reading a book at their level often manage 100 to 150 words per minute, and readers in their first language 200 to 250. Where these speeds come from, and a calculator for your own: How long does it take to read a book?

Where can you read it for free?

The free edition is from Standard Ebooks, a volunteer project that proofreads and typesets public-domain books. Standard Ebooks releases its editions into the public domain in the United States under CC0 1.0; you can download it as EPUB, Kindle (AZW3) or KEPUB without signing up.

To read it with a translation over every word you tap, open it in Readlang Mobile on iPhone or iPad.