Tolstoy’s most famous novella is an intense and moving examination of death and the possibilities of redemption, here in a powerful translation by the award-winning Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
Ivan Ilyich is a middle-aged man who has spent his life focused on his career as a bureaucrat and emotionally detached from his wife and children. After an accident he finds himself on the brink of an untimely death, which he sees as a terrible injustice. Face to face with his mortality, Ivan begins to question everything he has believed about the meaning of life. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a masterpiece of psychological realism and philosophical profundity that has inspired generations of readers.
“The English-speaking world is indebted to these two translators.” —Orlando Figes,
The New York Review of Books “Excellent. . . . The duo has managed to convey the rather simple elegance of Tolstoy’s prose.” —
The New Criterion “Pevear and Volokhonsky’s new version is . . . flexible individuated, immediate.” —
The Nation
“Well translated. As a lover of Tolstoy’s work, one couldn’t ask for more, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.” —André Alexis,
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
