Book description
The title story of this collection is about a man battling a
mysterious illness. His family visit his bedside, their faces masks of
concern. His colleagues pay their respects but only think of the
advantages created by his death. This intensely moving story of Ivan
Ilyich's lonely end is one of the masterpieces of Tolstoy's late fiction.
The ten other stories in this new collection include 'The Kreutzer
Sonata', 'The Devil', and 'Hadji Murat' which has been described by
Harold Bloom as 'the best story in the world'.
Leo Tolstoy was born in central Russia on 9 September 1828. In
1852 he published his first work, the autobiographical
Childhood. He served in the army during the Crimean War and his
Sevastopol Sketches (1855-6) are based on his experiences.
His two most popular masterpieces are War and Peace (1864-69)
and Anna Karenina (1875-8). He died in 20 November 1910.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have been nominated for the
PEN-Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize three times and have won
it twice. They live in Paris.
