Here are some of Tolstoy's extraordinary short stories, from -The Death of Ivan Ilyich—in a masterly new translation-to -The Raid,- -The Wood-felling,- -Three Deaths,- -Polikushka,- -After the Ball,- and -The Forged Coupon,- all gripping and eloquent lessons on two of Tolstoy's most persistent themes: life and death. More experimental than his novels, Tolstoy's stories are essential reading for anyone interested in his development as one of the major writers and thinkers of his time.
As Ivan Ilyich lies dying he begins to re-evaluate his life, searching for meaning that will make sense of his sufferings. In "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and the other works in this volume, Tolstoy conjures characters who, tested to the limit, reveal glorious and unexpected reserves of courage, or baseness of a near inhuman kind. Two vivid parables and "The Forged Coupon", a tale of criminality, explore class relations after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and the connection between an ethical life and worldly issues. In "Master and Workman" Tolstoy creates one of his most gripping dramas about human relationships put to the test in an extreme situation. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" is an existential masterpiece, a biting satire that recounts with extraordinary power the final illness and death of a bourgeois lawyer. In his Introduction Andrew Kahn explores Tolstoy's moral concerns and the stylistic features of these late stories, sensitively translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater. - Back cover.

Leo tolstoy; Anthony Briggs; David McDuff; Ronald Wilks; OverDrive, Inc

Lev Nikolaevič Tolstoy

Random House, Incorporated

Penguin Publishing Group

Penguin Random House LLC

Penguin USA, Inc.

United States, United States of America

New York, New York State, October 2001

Penguin classics, London, 2008

2009

librusecid_506362

As an unusual illness plagues Russian public official Ivan Ilyich, his life is forever changed as he deals with doctors who cannot diagnose or treat him, as well as a certain death sentence

WE WERE in mourning for my mother, who had died in the autumn, and I spent all that winter alone in the country with Katya and Sonya.

2015-12-26