Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession, The

Product Description A pairing of Tolstoy's most spiritual and existential works of fiction and nonfiction from the renowned translator of Turgenev and Chekhov.In the last two days of his own life, Peter Carson completed these new translations of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession before he succumbed to cancer in January 2013. Carson, the eminent British publisher, editor, and translator who, in the words of his author Mary Beard, "had probably more influence on the literary landscape of [England] over the past fifty years than any other single person," must have seen the irony of translating Ilyich, Tolstoy's profound meditation on death and loss, "but he pressed on regardless, apparently refusing to be distracted by the parallel of literature and life." In Carson's shimmering prose, these two transcendent works are presented in their most faithful rendering in English. Unlike so many previous translations that have tried to smooth out Tolstoy's rough edges, Carson presents a translation that captures the verisimilitude and psychological realism of the original Russian text. About the Author Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 on his family’s estate in the Tula Province of Russia. The author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, he died in 1910 at a remote rail station in Astapovo, Russia.