Editors Reads Verdict
Perhaps the most perfect novella in the history of the form — Tolstoy's account of a man dying and realising he has not lived is as exact and devastating as anything in literature. One of the essential reads of a lifetime.
What We Loved
- As perfect a formal achievement as exists in prose fiction — not a word is unnecessary
- The psychological account of how a person avoids confronting mortality is exact and universal
- Gerasim, the peasant servant, is one of the great minor characters in literature
Minor Drawbacks
- So relentless in its diagnosis that rereading requires some courage
- Tolstoy's didacticism about authentic versus inauthentic life is less nuanced here than in his major novels
Key Takeaways
- → A life organised around respectability and social position rather than genuine feeling is not a good life
- → Death strips away the social performances that ordinary life supports and reveals what remains
- → Gerasim's uncomplicated kindness is more comfort than all of Ivan's social relations
| Author | Leo Tolstoy |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Bantam Classics |
| Pages | 128 |
| Published | January 1, 1886 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Classic, Literary Fiction, Philosophy |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Everyone. One of the ten most important short books ever written — essential for any serious reader. |
The Most Important Short Book
Ivan Ilyich Golovin has done everything correctly. He studied law, obtained a good position, married appropriately, furnished his house in good taste, and advanced through the courts to a comfortable senior judgeship. He is not a bad man; he is a conventional man, and the two, Tolstoy argues, are not so different.
At fifty-five, he injures himself hanging curtains. The injury does not heal. He is dying. The process of dying — the physical deterioration, the unreliability of the doctors, the false cheerfulness of his family — forces Ivan Ilyich to confront a question he has never been equipped to answer: Has my life been good?
The Answer
The answer, which arrives slowly and then suddenly in the novella’s final pages, is no. Not wicked — Ivan is not wicked — but not good. Not real. He has performed the correct things in the correct order and has, in doing so, failed to live. The only genuine human contact he receives in his dying is from Gerasim, his peasant servant, who cares for him without embarrassment or pretence.
Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich after his own religious and moral crisis, and it carries the full force of his conviction that conventional bourgeois life is a kind of spiritual death. But the argument does not require the conviction: the psychological account of how Ivan avoids, then cannot avoid, the question of his life is universal enough to function without the theological framework.
At 128 pages it is among the shortest books in world literature and among the most essential.
Our rating: 4.6/5 — One of the perfect works of fiction: exact, merciless, and necessary.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" about?
A successful judge who has lived a conventional, comfortable life falls ill and, in the process of dying, confronts the question of whether his life has been good — and discovers that it has not.
Who should read "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"?
Everyone. One of the ten most important short books ever written — essential for any serious reader.
What are the key takeaways from "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"?
A life organised around respectability and social position rather than genuine feeling is not a good life Death strips away the social performances that ordinary life supports and reveals what remains Gerasim's uncomplicated kindness is more comfort than all of Ivan's social relations
Is "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" worth reading?
Perhaps the most perfect novella in the history of the form — Tolstoy's account of a man dying and realising he has not lived is as exact and devastating as anything in literature. One of the essential reads of a lifetime.
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