The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Louise and Aylmer Maude (1923)
Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), given here in Louise and Aylmer Maude's authoritative 1923 translation, is widely regarded as one of the greatest novellas ever written. It follows a self-satisfied, conventional Russian magistrate through the agony of a terminal illness, forcing him to confront the emptiness of a life lived for propriety and advancement. In his final hours, stripped of every comfortable illusion, Ivan Ilyich glimpses compassion and a liberating truth. A profound meditation on mortality, authenticity, and the fear of death, it distills Tolstoy's late moral vision.
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