Vintage books The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories Толстой Лев Николаевич

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 McDuff 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

Leo Tolstoy combined detailed physical description with perceptive psychological insight to sweep aside the sham of surface appearances and lay bare man’s intimate gestures, acts, and thoughts. Murder and sacrifice…greed and devotion…lust and affection…vanity and love—one by one, in this volume of great stories, Tolstoy dissects the basic drives, emotions, and motives of ordinary people searching for self-knowledge and spiritual perfection

This collection of eleven stories spans virtually the whole of Tolstoy's creative life. While each is unique in form, as a group they are representative of his style, and touch on the central themes that surface in War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Stories as different as "The Snowstorm", "Lucerne", "The Diary of a Madman", and "The Devil" are grounded in autobiographical experience. They deal with journeys of self-discovery and the moral and religious thought that characterizes Tolstoy's works of criticism and philosophy. "Strider" and "Father Sergy", as well as reflecting Tolstoy's own experiences, also reveal profound psychological insights • These stories range over much of the nineteenth-century Russian world, from the nobility to the peasantry, the military to the clergy, from merchants and cobblers to a horse and a tree

This second volume of Tolstoy's shorter fiction, selected by the critic Sharon Cameron, contains 'Family Happiness', 'The Devil' and 'The Kreutzer Sonata', three of Tolstoy's unhappy-marriage stories as well as 'Father Sergius', a story of a loss of identity in ambitious pursuit of holy virtue and 'Master and Man'. Tolstoy's antidotes to delusion, fear, jealousy and even madness have an ethical thread pulled through the fabric of different themes and genres • This riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English

The judge Ivan Ilyich Golovin has spent his life in the pursuit of wealth and status, devoting himself obsessively to work and often neglecting his family in the process. When, after a small accident, he fails to make the expected recovery, it gradually becomes clear that he is soon to die. Ivan Ilyich then starts to question the futility and barrenness of his previous existence, realizing to his horror, as he grapples with the meaning of life and death, that he is totally alone • Included in this volume is another celebrated novella by Tolstoy, The Devil, which addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience, providing at the same time a further exploration of human fear and obsession

On a train journey, Pozdnyshev tells his story to a stranger: how his relationship with his wife gradually deteriorated from one of love and passion to jealousy and resentfulness, culminating in a mad act of desperation while she practised Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with her violin teacher • An uncompromising examination of lust, suspicion and infidelity which was once forbidden by censors in Russia and banned in the US due to its shocking content, Tolstoy’s controversial novella – here presented in a new translation, along with ‘The Prisoner of the Caucasus’, ‘Master and Man’ and ‘After the Ball’ – is now considered one of the masterpieces of Tolstoy’s late period

In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here. Begun in 1852 but unfinished for a decade, The Cossacks describes the experiences of Olenin, a young cultured Russian who comes to despise civilization after spending time with the wild Cossack people. Sevastopol Sketches, based on Tolstoy's own experiences of the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55, is a compelling consideration of the nature of war, while Hadji Murat, written towards the end of his life, returns to the Caucasus of Tolstoy's youth to explore the life of a great leader torn apart by a conflict of loyalties

The ten stories collected in this volume demonstrate Tolstoy's artistic prowess displayed over five decades - experimenting with prose styles and drawing on his own experiences with humour, realism and compassion. Inspired by his experiences in the army, 'The Two Hussars' contrasts a dashing father and his mean-spirited son. Illustrating Tolstoy's belief that art must serve a moral purpose, 'What Men Live By' portrays an angel sent to earth to learn three existential rules of life, and 'Two Old Men' shows a peasant abandoning his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to help his neighbours. And in the highly moving 'Master and Man', Tolstoy depicts a mercenary merchant travelling with his unprotesting servant through a blizzard to close a business deal - little realizing he may soon have to settle accounts with his maker

This volume includes Family Happiness; The Kreutzer Sonata; The Devil and Father Sergius. The four stories are all about love, but they take very different attitudes towards it. Tolstoy knows that jis readers have fallen in love and also, often, fallen out of it; they have wanted to kill their loved ones; they have lusted vigorously; or desperately sought the approval and even worship of others - Tolstoy depends on our own memories to entagle us in his tragic stories

Simon and David - a tall ten-year-old - are in a new land, together with a woman named Ines. The small family have found a home in which David can thrive • But David is spotted by Julio Fabricante, the director of a local orphanage, playing football with his friends. He shows unusual talent. When David announces that he wants to live with Julio and the children in his care, Simon and Ines are stunned. David is leaving them, and they can only love him and bear witness • The Death of Jesus is the completion of an incomparable trilogy in which J. M. Coetzee explores the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions

When sixteen-year-old Portia is orphaned she is plunged into the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home. There she encounters the attractive cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and he fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal - and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature

When Harriet Westaway receives an unexpected letter telling her she's inherited a substantial bequest from her Cornish grandmother, it seems like the answer to her prayers. She owes money to a loan shark and the threats are getting increasingly aggressive: she needs to get her hands on some cash fast • There's just one problem - Hal's real grandparents died more than twenty years ago. The letter has been sent to the wrong person. But Hal knows that the cold-reading techniques she's honed as a seaside fortune teller could help her con her way to getting the money. If anyone has the skills to turn up at a stranger's funeral and claim a bequest they're not entitled to, it's her • Hal makes a choice that will change her life for ever. But once she embarks on her deception, there is no going back