Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his dying so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face-to-face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

IN THE Death of Ivan Ilyich Tolstoy takes what was for him the tremendous imaginary leap of analyzing the reactions of a man who, until the surprising pain of his terminal illness began, had never given the inevitability of his own dying so much as a passing thought; a man who thus was as unlike Tolstoy as it was possible to be, for Tolstoy was a lifelong deathwatcher.He was, in fact, highly experienced in death and had compulsively observed it from a thousand angles both physically and metaphysically. He could not resist looking at it even when the sight terrified him. Ivan Ilyich,on the other hand, had taken no look and had made no search……

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12