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  • Published: 3 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099541066
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $24.99

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories




Magnificent new translation of Tolstoy's fiction by the acclaimed duo behind War and Peace.


'As good as anything Tolstoy ever wrote... Self-assured, vital, unforgettable' Guardian
The title story of this collection is about a man battling a mysterious illness. His family visit his bedside, their faces masks of concern. His colleagues pay their respects but only think of the advantages created by his death. This intensely moving story of Ivan Ilyich's lonely end is one of the masterpieces of Tolstoy's late fiction.

The ten other stories in this collection include 'The Kreutzer Sonata', 'The Devil', and 'Hadji Murat' which has been described by Harold Bloom as 'the best story in the world'.

  • Published: 3 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099541066
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $24.99

Other books in the series

Emma
Persuasion
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
Selected Poetry
On Sparta
Man and Superman
Saint Joan
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Tula province. He studied at the University of Kazan, then led a life of pleasure until 1851 when he joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus. He established his reputation as a writer with The Sebastopol Sketches (1855-6). After a period in St Petersburg and abroad, he married, had thirteen children, managed his vast estates in the Volga Steppes and wrote War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). A Confession (1879-82) marked a spiritual crisis in his life, and in 1901 he was excommuincated by the Russian Holy Synod. He died in 1910, in the course of a dramatic flight from home, at the railway station of Astapovo.

Also by Leo Tolstoy

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Praise for The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

As good as anything Tolstoy ever wrote... Self-assured, vital, unforgettable

Guardian

The simplicity and power of this novella, the story of the terrible encroachment of death on a shallow man spiritually unprepared for it, has staggered millions

Sunday Telegraph

I don't read Russian, but I think Tolstoy's writing comes over whatever translation you read...he wrote the great, terrible story The Death of Ivan Illyich

Redmond O'Hanlon, Independent

For me, the best insight into the process of dying comes from Leo Tolstoy in his short story, The Death of Ivan Ilych, which examines the life and death of the most ordinary man

Oliver James, Mail on Sunday

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

Philip Womack, Observer

An indubitable masterpiece

Yann Martel
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