Read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by email.
Short, and it does not leave you alone afterwards.
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.
Two or three minutes a day, and every installment opens with a line reminding you where you left off.
Six weeks from now, you will have read Tolstoy.
41 installments, one an email
- First published
- 1886
- Installments
- 41
- Each installment
- 2–3 min
How long it takes
- Words
- 23,603
- Reading time
- 1 hour 38 minutes
- At 5 minutes a day
- 3 weeks
- At 10 minutes a day
- 10 days
- At 20 minutes a day
- 5 days
At 240 words a minute, the average for adult silent reading. Use your own speed
Why 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.
Frequently Asked 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.
Constance Garnett translation, Standard Ebooks edition, public domain. Texts from Standard Ebooks and Project Gutenberg editions. Not affiliated with either.