Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (World's Classics) - Hardcover

Leo Tolstoy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0192504320 ISBN 13: 9780192504326

Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr (T), 1971

Synopsis

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, was foremost among the great Russian novelists of the nineteenth century, and is widely considered one of the greatest writers of prose fiction in world history.

In his perceptive and moving depiction of Ivan Ilych, a worldly careerist facing his own mortality in the midst of a self-absorbed family and indifferent colleagues, Tolstoy provides one of literature’s greatest and most memorable reflections on the meaning of the good life and on life as preparation for death.

This edition features the classic Oxford translation of Aylmer and Louise Maude, of whom Tolstoy himself said, “Better translators, both for knowledge of the two languages and for penetration into the very meaning of the matter translated, could not be invented.”

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.

About the Author

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian novelist. He is regarded as one of the greatest in the canon of world literature. His best known works are War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). He first achieved literary acclaim in his 20s with the semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), and Sevastopol Sketches(1855), the latter based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays. In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as a profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His new-found asceticism and determination to renounce his considerable wealth tipped his marriage into turmoil, which continued right up to his death at the age of 82, in the waiting room of an, until then, obscure Russian railway station. Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a significant impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr (T)
• Publication date: 1971
• ISBN 10: 0192504320
• ISBN 13: 9780192504326
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 428