The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Leo Tolstoy

apr. 2020 · Open Road Media

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A successful man must face the terror of his own mortality in this masterful nineteenth-century Russian novella by the author of War and Peace.

In his later years, Leo Tolstoy began to contemplate the inescapable realities of mortality—its terrifying mystery, its many indignities, and the way it forces one to look back on the legacy and regrets of one’s life. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, widely considered the masterpiece of Tolstoy’s late career, is both a deeply insightful meditation on the final months of a man’s life, and an unsparing critique of conventional middle-class life in nineteenth-century Russia.

Ivan Ilyich, a prosperous high-court judge, spends his days pursuing social advancement among his peers and avoiding his loveless marriage. But when a seemingly innocuous injury signals the beginning of a terminal illness, Ilyich begins to see the true worth of his life with tragic clarity.

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Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was one of the most influential writers in Russian history. Born a Russian aristocrat, Tolstoy had, by the age of twenty-six, become both a nobleman and a soldier. Disenchanted by both lives, he became a writer, producing two of Russian literature’s greatest works: War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Tolstoy was a giant of modern literature and made a profound impact on great twentieth-century figures such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.