Product Description

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a masterly meditation on life and death, recounting the physical decline and spiritual awakening of a worldly, successful man who is faced with his own mortality. Only in his last agonizing moments does Ivan Ilyich finally confront his true nature, and gain the forgiveness of his wife and son for his cruelty towards them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #584780 in Books
• Published on: 1989-02-23
• Original language: Russian
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.84" h x .81" w x 5.32" l,
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
"A fitting monument to Tolstoy's battles with what it is that makes us human" --Observer

From the Back Cover

FROM THE AWARD-WINNING TRANSLATORS OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT AND WAR AND PEACE

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is one of the masterpieces of Tolstoy's late fiction and the first major fictional work to be published by the author after his crisis and conversion to Christianity. The story of the life and death at the age of forty-five, of a high court prosecutor in 19th-century Russia, it is an intense and moving examination of loss and the possibilities of redemption, in which Tolstoy explores the dichotomy between the artificial and the authentic life.The nine other stories in this new collection include 'Hadji Murat' which has been described by Harold Bloom as 'the best story in the world' and 'The Devil', a tale of sexual obsession based on Tolstoy's own relationship with a married peasant woman on his estate in the years before his marriage.

Magnificently translated by the acclaimed translating team behind War and Peace, this new volume captures the richness and immediacy of Tolstoy's language and reveals the author as a passionate moral guide, an unflinching seeker of truth, and a creator of enduring and universal art.

'Tolstoy's prose is majestic, his pace measured, his characters unflinchingly true to life, his message bleak' Guardian

About the Author
Count Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 on the family estate of Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula province. He took part in the Crimean war and after the defence of Sevastopol wrote The Sevastopol Sketches (1855-6), which established his literary reputation. He is the author, among many other works, of War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) and A Confession (1879--82).