Leo Tolstoy, Elif Shafak, and Kaveh Akbar have all written novels in which their main characters are concerned with dying. Contrary to what one might expect, all three novels are often funny as well as enlightening. In Tolstoy’s case, Ivan Ilyich is slowly dying from an undiagnosed disease, which many in his social and familial circle discuss, often without true sympathy or empathy. Shafak’s main character, a prostitute, we learn on the first page of the novel, is a prostitute who has been is murdered, and we hear the ruminations of her brain in the 10 minutes and 38 seconds in which it is still active after her body’s death. Akbar’s protagonist, an Iranian immigrant to the United States, suffered the loss of his mother at age two when her plane was shot out of the sky by a U.S. missile. He has been seeking a “meaningful death” since sometime in his late teens and eventually visits an artist in New York City who has chosen to turn her own slow dying into an art installation at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. All three works present great writing for us to appreciate and interesting ideas to discuss. We will focus on the question of how these authors present what a “meaningful” death might mean, aside from the natural assumption that the answer has to do with a meaningful life. Please use the translation of The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. For Elif Shafak’s Ten Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World and Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr, any edition is fine.

Betsy Lovell Arsenault graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in English. Three years after she finished at Swarthmore, she decided she could no longer resist the powerful call of teaching and attended the University of Chicago for a Master of Arts in teaching in English, subsequently taking a job at a high school in a south suburb of Chicago. After an interesting but turbulent year in that school, she moved to New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois and surprised herself by staying there 32 years, with an additional ten added on for long-term subbing and tutoring. She continues to read for both fun and further education and has taken a variety of courses in her spare time. 

Level: All Levels