The Death of Ivan Ilyich

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Hailed as one of the best novellas ever published as well as an outstanding triumph of his later fiction, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is Leo Tolstoys masterfully crafted story on what it means to face the end.

Ivan Ilyich is dead. Diagnosed just weeks before with an unknownbut terminalillness, the late Court of Justice spent his final days reflecting on his most simple and most ordinaryand therefore most terriblelife. He did as was expected: worked an important job, garnered moderate wealth, married a slightly demanding woman, and started a family of his ownbut had he ever truly lived

Inspired by his newfound faith and renewed sense of purpose, Leo Tolstoys first major post-conversion work of fiction sees a modern unsentimental man face the reality of his own mortality. Not just the act and process of dying, but the physicality of waking up in a body that is doomed to fail, the actuality of the burden he is becoming to his family, and the vulnerability in knowing that ultimately, heand everyone elsewill die alone.

Author Bio

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian author of novels, short stories, novellas, plays, and philosophical essays. He was born into an aristocratic family and served as an officer in the Russian military during the Crimean War before embarking on a career as a writer and activist. Tolstoy's experience in war, combined with his interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, led him to devote his life and work to the cause of pacifism. In addition to such fictional works as War and Peace (1869), Anna Karenina (1877), and The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Tolstoy wrote The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893), a philosophical treatise on nonviolent resistance which had a profound impact on Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He is regarded today not only as one of the greatest writers of all time, but as a gifted and passionate political figure and public intellectual whose work transcends Russian history and literature alike.