Read The Death of Ivan Ilyich in Daily Email Installments
A High Court judge dies at forty-five, and his colleagues' first thought is who gets his job. Then Tolstoy goes back to the beginning and shows you the life — correct, decorous, approved by everyone — that produced that death. Widely held to be the finest short novel ever written.
One installment a day: 41 days — about six weeks. Pause, rewind, or stop anytime.
Start reading — freeWhy read The Death of Ivan Ilyich?
Ivan Ilyich Golovin does everything right. He takes the safe post, marries the suitable woman, furnishes the correct drawing-room, and rises steadily in the judicial service. Then he slips from a ladder hanging a curtain, knocks his side, and over the following months discovers that the life he assembled so carefully will not stand up to examination.
It is the most useful novel ever written about professional life, and the most uncomfortable. Ivan Ilyich's great gift is the art of keeping the human strictly apart from the official — he can reduce any case, however complex, to what will fit on stamped paper. When he finally becomes a case himself, his doctors handle him exactly as he handled everyone else, and he recognizes the performance from the other side of the bench.
Short enough to finish in six weeks, and impossible to finish unchanged. We serialize the classic Constance Garnett translation, broken at Tolstoy's own chapter divisions, with a “Previously” recap on every installment.
What an installment looks like
Inside the great building of the Law Courts, during the interval in the hearing of the Melvinsky case, the members of the judicial council and the public prosecutor were gathered together in the private room of Ivan Yegorovitch Shebek, and the conversation turned upon the celebrated Krasovsky case. Fyodor Vassilievitch hotly maintained that the case was not in the jurisdiction of the court. Yegor Ivanovitch stood up for his own view; but from the first Pyotr Ivanovitch, who had not entered into the discussion, took no interest in it, but was looking through the newspapers which had just been brought in.
“Gentlemen!” he said, “Ivan Ilyitch is dead!”
“You don’t say so!”
“Here, read it,” he said to Fyodor Vassilievitch, handing him the fresh still damp-smelling paper.
Within a black margin was printed: “Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovin with heartfelt affliction informs friends and relatives of the decease of her beloved husband, member of the Court of Justice, Ivan Ilyitch Golovin, who passed away on the 4th of February. The funeral will take place on Thursday at one o’clock.”
Questions
How long does it take to read The Death of Ivan Ilyich?
About an hour and three-quarters straight through (23,603 words). By email, it's 41 daily installments of 2–3 minutes each — finished in about six weeks.
Is this a good first Tolstoy?
It's the best one. War and Peace and Anna Karenina are extraordinary and enormous; this is the same author at full power in under twenty-four thousand words. If you have been meaning to read Tolstoy for years, start here and you will have actually done it by next month.
Which translation is this?
Constance Garnett's public-domain translation, in the carefully typeset Standard Ebooks edition — the same translator behind our Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment. Garnett renders the name “Ivan Ilyitch”; the modern spelling “Ilyich” is the one you'll see on most covers.
Isn't it grim?
It is unsparing, but it is not bleak, and it is far funnier than its title suggests — the opening chapter, in which everyone at the funeral thinks about promotions and card games, is comedy of a very cold kind. The last pages are among the most hopeful Tolstoy ever wrote.
Why do lawyers keep recommending this one?
Because the protagonist is one of them. Ivan Ilyich is a judge, the novel is set among examining magistrates and public prosecutors, and its subject is what a career built on correctness costs. Few professional novels land this precisely.
How does it arrive?
One email a day at the hour you pick, with a one-line recap of the previous installment at the top. Free. Unsubscribe or pause anytime.
Pick your delivery hour, confirm your email, and installment 1 of 41 arrives with the next send. Free, and unsubscribe anytime.
Start The Death of Ivan IlyichBrowse all books · How long does a classic take? Try the calculator