The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Vintage Classics · first published 1886 · 64 pages
A respectable judge falls ill after a small household accident and begins to question the life he has lived.
Brief and plain-spoken, it watches the comforts of an ordinary, proper career fall away one by one.
For a night of taking stock.
About this book
Ivan Ilyich has done everything correctly: a good post in the courts, a suitable marriage, a well-furnished apartment. A small fall while hanging curtains leads to a pain that doctors cannot explain, and his colleagues and family begin to treat him as an inconvenience. Only a young servant, Gerasim, offers him simple, unembarrassed kindness. The novella looks closely at fear, pretense and the question of what a life is for.