diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 23635782d..b37c219b5 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -60,6 +60,26 @@ import os
 import platform
 import distutils.sysconfig as sysconfig
 
+
+# monkey-patch for parallel compilation
+# from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11013851/speeding-up-build-process-with-distutils
+def parallelCCompile(self, sources, output_dir=None, macros=None, include_dirs=None, debug=0, extra_preargs=None, extra_postargs=None, depends=None):
+    # those lines are copied from distutils.ccompiler.CCompiler directly
+    macros, objects, extra_postargs, pp_opts, build = self._setup_compile(output_dir, macros, include_dirs, sources, depends, extra_postargs)
+    cc_args = self._get_cc_args(pp_opts, debug, extra_preargs)
+    # parallel code
+    N=2 # number of parallel compilations
+    import multiprocessing.pool
+    def _single_compile(obj):
+        try: src, ext = build[obj]
+        except KeyError: return
+        self._compile(obj, src, ext, cc_args, extra_postargs, pp_opts)
+    # convert to list, imap is evaluated on-demand
+    list(multiprocessing.pool.ThreadPool(N).imap(_single_compile,objects))
+    return objects
+import distutils.ccompiler
+distutils.ccompiler.CCompiler.compile=parallelCCompile
+
 # ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------