The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories

The most well-known works by Count Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) are War and Peace and Anna Karenina which are frequently listed among the best books ever written. But he also produced a large number of exquisite short stories four of which are collected in this anthology in exemplary translations that have lasted the test of time. Tolstoy examines courting and marriage from the viewpoint of a young wife in the early narrative Family Happiness. He gives us a horrifying examination of marital collapse in The Kreutzer Sonata a potent portrayal of the force of sexual temptation in The Devil and perhaps most of all he captures the prolonged agony of a man coming to terms with his own mortality in The Death of Ivan Ilyich.