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  • Published: 3 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099541066
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $22.99

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: $22.99

Other books in the series

On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was born in central Russia in 1828. He studied Oriental languages and law (although failed to earn a degree in the latter) at the University of Kazan, and after a dissolute youth eventually joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus in 1851. He took part in the Crimean War, and the Sebastopol Sketches that emerged from it established his reputation. After living for some time in St Petersburg and abroad, he married Sophie Behrs in 1862 and they had thirteen children. The happiness this brought him gave him the creative impulse for his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Later in life his views became increasingly radical as he gave up his possessions to live a simple peasant life. After a quarrel with his wife he fled home secretly one night to seek refuge in a monastery. He became ill during this dramatic flight and died at the small railway station of Astapovo in 1910.

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