- 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
About the author
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.
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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
