Binding: Paperback
Description: The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories is a collection of stories that emerged from a profound spiritual crisis during which Leo Tolstoy believed that he had encountered death itself. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction by Anthony Briggs David Mc Duff and Ronald Wilks. These seven compelling stories explore in very different ways Tolstoy's preoccupation with mortality. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a devastating account of a man fighting his inevitable end and asks the existential question: why must a good person be taken before his time? In Polikushka' a light - fingered drunk's chance to prove himself has tragic repercussions while Three Deaths depicts the last moments of an aristocrat a peasant and a tree and The Forged Coupon shows a seemingly minor offence that leads inexorably to ever more horrific crimes. And in three tales about soldiers After the Ball' The Wood - felling and The Raid' Tolstoy portrays the brutality that all too often accompanies military life. The translations by Anthony Briggs David Mc Duff and Ronald Wilks capture Tolstoy's powerful vivid prose. This edition also includes a new introduction by Anthony Briggs discussing Tolstoy's breakdown and the effect this had on his writing as well as a chronology further reading and notes. Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) was born at Yasnaya Polyana in central Russia. He led a life of wasteful idleness until 1851, when he travelled to the Caucasus and joined the army with his older brother fighting in the Crimean war. After marrying Sofya Behrs in 1862, Tolstoy settled down managing his estates and writing two of his best - known novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878). In 1884 Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis becoming an extreme moralist rejecting the state the church and private property. His last novel Resurrection (1900) was written to raise money for the Doukhobor sect of Christian spiritualists. If you enjoyed The Death of Ivan Ilyich you might like Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment also available in Penguin Classics.
Title: The Death Of Ivan Ilyich And Other Stories
Author(s): Tolstoy Leo
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Barcode: 9780140449617
Pages: 352 Pages
Language: English
Publication Date: 6/1/2008
Category: Fiction In Translation