The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

At the age of forty-one, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) underwent a profound spiritual crisis, from which he emerged believing that he had encountered death itself. These seven compelling stories explore, in very different ways, his subsequent preoccupation with mortality. The Death of Ivan Ilyich'is a devastating account of a man fighting his inevitable end, and asks the existential question: why must a good person be taken before his time?  A magnificent new translation.