The Death of Ivan Ilyich

One of the peaks of world psychological prose. Tracing the thoughts and feelings of a mortally ill government official, Tolstoy shows how a person runs away from thoughts of death—and how death leads him to understand what his life had really been.

“ This story is Tolstoy’s brightest, most perfect, and most complex work.”

V. V. Nabokov

“No people anywhere in the world have produced such a brilliant creation. Everything is too little, too small, too weak, too pale compared to these seventy pages.”

V. V. Stasov

“I read ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich.’ More than ever I am convinced that the greatest of all writers-artists ever, anywhere, is L. N. Tolstoy. His alone is enough to ensure that the Russian person doesn’t shyly bow his head when they tally before him all the greatness Europe has given humanity…”

P. I. Tchaikovsky