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Who’s afraid of realism?

Who’s afraid of realism?

London Review of Books
Date de sortie : 2026-04-27
© LRB Ltd
Who’s afraid of realism? - QR Code
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6 épisodes
Audio
Écouter sur Apple Podcasts
LibreNew
6 épisodes
Audio
Écouter sur Apple Podcasts
Date de sortie : 2026-04-27
© LRB Ltd
L’épisode le plus récent
‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ by Leo Tolstoy

‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ by Leo Tolstoy

Durée : 22:38
Lecture
In the late 1870s, shortly after the publication of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy experienced what might be described today as a midlife crisis. In his short autobiographical book ‘A Confession’, finished in 1880, he questioned what meaning there is in life that is not annihilated by the inevitability of death. His answer was to live according to God’s law, a realisation that shaped that rest of his life and writing, and guides the story of his late masterpiece, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ (1886).
To discuss ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich‘ and its place both in Tolstoy’s work and the development of realism, James is joined by the novelist Elif Batuman. They consider the way Tolstoy takes up Flaubert’s contempt for bourgeois life and strips it down to a spare fable of delusion and awakening, and why the unique authority of his style has proved so resistant to the critiques of realism in the 20th century.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor
Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor
Read more in the LRB:
Michael Wood on War and Peace: ⁠https://lrb.me/realismep501⁠
James Meek on the death of Tolstoy: ⁠https://lrb.me/realismep502⁠
John Bayley on Tolstoy's diaries: ⁠https://lrb.me/realismep503⁠
Id. d’épisode : 1000763436709
GUID : 3ee27e36-6a57-4884-bd29-5f5d5dd4e70f
Date de publication : 27/4/2026 à 12:00:00

Description

What’s the difference between realism and the real? James Wood look at novels and short stories from Flaubert and Dostoevsky up to contemporary writers including Amit Chaudhuri and Gwendoline Riley as he examines the uncertain line between artifice and artificiality and the techniques and effects used in fiction to achieve the lifelike.
James Wood is a contributor to the London Review of Books, staff writer at The New Yorker and Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University. His books include ‘How Fiction Works’, ‘The Fun Stuff’ and ‘The Broken Estate’.
Non-subscribers will only hear extracts from the episodes. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor
Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor
Books featured in the series:
Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics, trans. Geoffrey Wall)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
Three stories by Anton Chekhov (UK: Bravo Ltd., from Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; USA: same edition, Modern Library)
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Vintage, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (UK: Penguin Modern Classics; USA: Mariner Books Classics)
Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark (UK: Penguin Modern Classics; USA: Norton)
Saul Bellow, Seize The Day (Penguin Modern Classics)
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (UK: Penguin Modern Classics; USA: Vintage)
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (UK: Penguin Modern Classics; USA: Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
Dag Solstad, Shyness & Dignity (Vintage, trans. Sverre Lyngstad)
Amit Chaudhuri, Afternoon Raag (UK: Faber and Faber, USA: New York Review Books Classics)
Gwendoline Riley, My Phantoms (UK: Granta Books; USA: New York Review Books Classics)

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