The death of Ivan Ilyich / Tolstoy, Leo

The story of the life and death at the age of forty-five, of a high court prosecutor in 19th-century Russia, it is an intense and moving examination of loss and the possibilities of redemption, in which Tolstoy explores the dichotomy between the artificial and the authentic life.

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.