The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, with eBook

Product Description<br/><br/><br/>Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, Leo Tolstoy's "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 novella was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of<br/>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. Also included in this volume are "The Forged Coupon," "After the Dance," "My Dream," "There Are No Guilty People," and "The Young Tsar."<br/><br/><br/>Review<br/><br/><br/>"A serene god."-- "Marcel Proust, praise for the author"<br/><br/><br/>"A sublime artist."-- "Fyodor Dostoyevsky, praise for the author"<br/><br/><br/>"The greatest of all novelists."-- "Virginia Woolf, praise for the author"<br/><br/>A well-balanced reading that is easy to follow and that brings home the emotional punch of Ivan Ilych's stirring last weeks, days, and moments.-- "AudioFile"<br/><br/><br/>About the Author<br/><br/><br/>Leo Tolstoy (18281910) was born about two hundred miles from Moscow. His mother died when he was two, his father when he was nine. His parents were of noble birth, and Tolstoy remained acutely aware of his aristocratic roots, even when he later embraced doctrines of equality and the brotherhood of man. After serving in the army in the Caucasus and Crimea, where he wrote his first stories, he traveled and studied educational theories. In 1862 he married Sophia Behrs and for the next fifteen years lived a tranquil, productive life, finishing War and Peace in 1869 and Anna Karenina in 1877. In 1879 he underwent a spiritual crisis; he sought to propagate his beliefs on faith, morality, and nonviolence, writing mostly parables, tracts, and morality plays. Tolstoy died of pneumonia in 1910 at the age of eighty-two.