The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Bantam Classics)

Ivan Ilych, a peaceful public official in the Russian provinces, has his life permanently changed by a serious illness which no doctor can accurately diagnose. Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, 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. From world-renowned novelist Leo Tolstoy comes this story of a worldly careerist who must consider death for the first time and examine his own mortality. With a superb translation by Lynn Solotaroff, it features an introduction by Ronald Blythe.