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    The Death of Ivan Ilyich
    The Death of Ivan Ilyich
    The Death of Ivan Ilyich
    Audiobook2 hours

    The Death of Ivan Ilyich

    Written by Leo Tolstoy

    Narrated by Oliver Ford Davies

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    About this audiobook

    Drawing on the experience of his own struggle to find enlightenment and a deeper spiritual understanding of life, Tolstoy in The Death of Ivan Ilyich takes us on the final journey towards death with Ivan Ilyich, who, falling victim to an incurable illness, ponders on his own life – its shallowness and lack of compassion, wondering what is the meaning of it all. At times sombre, at times satirical, Tolstoy’s novel raises questions about the way we live and how we should strive even at the end to seek final redemption. It is a powerful masterpiece of psychological exploration, and has influenced writers as diverse as Hemingway and Nabokov. Translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateSep 1, 2007
    ISBN9789629545703
    Author

    Leo Tolstoy

    Leo Tolstoy grew up in Russia, raised by a elderly aunt and educated by French tutors while studying at Kazen University before giving up on his education and volunteering for military duty. When writing his greatest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy drew upon his diaries for material. At eighty-two, while away from home, he suffered from declining health and died in Astapovo, Riazan in 1910.

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    Reviews for The Death of Ivan Ilyich

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    1,532 ratings64 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Unapologetic look at life of unimportance.
    • 3/5
      I liked the concept, but quickly grew bored.
    • 5/5
      This is one of these cases where the reader gets really involved in the story and its character: Tolstoi practically doesn't do anything in his novella than letting Ivan Ilych die. It doesn't matter if you can identify yourself with the protagonist or not, sooner or later you feel yourself exposed to your very own agony, even if you aren't even close to your death. A very emotional book.
    • 4/5
      I was fascinated by the timelessness of this story about a superficial man whose "life flowed pleasantly" until he was struck down by a terminal illness. I kept thinking...isn't this how many people live today? We are absorbed in keeping up appearances and advancing our careers while our very souls wither away.Tolstoy brilliantly portrays the anatomy of an illness through which Ivan tortuously ricochets. While he experiences denial, obsession, withdrawal, anger, self-pity, and all the conflicting stages of a serious disease, his family and friends consider the "invisible It" as an intrusion on their well-ordered lives. Although his spiritual anguish is finally relieved in a deathbed revelation, maybe Tolstoy's readers can learn the lesson of examining our lives and making changes before we reach the ultimate finality of death.
    • 4/5
      Normally a book that looks this closely at death would, I'm afraid, terrify me. I have enough anxiety already, I don't need to think about the "dragging pain" in Ivan Ilyich's side, which -- being a doctor's daughter -- I could diagnose fairly easily as some kind of cancer, quite probably cancer of the gallbladder. That "dragging pain" is the giveaway to me, because it was in all the descriptions of the sort of pain cancer of the gallbladder causes. I know all about that because of the anxious period before I was diagnosed with gallstones. Anyway, it occurs to me that because Tolstoy never uses a specific word, never tells you specifically what is wrong with Ivan -- in fact, Ivan himself never knows -- it can be whatever you fear. For me, cancer is the obvious one.

      And okay, yes, this book did terrify me a bit, but I think in the way that it would terrify anybody. Imagining lying at the point of death and questioning if your life was of any use, if you did anything that really made you happy, if you did anything that really made you satisfied...

      This is nothing like Tolstoy's other books. There's a narrow focus on a single character, and -- in this translation at least -- the words are simple and directly to the point. Tolstoy's gift for a slightly satirical tone is in evidence. Ivan is not a particularly good man, but he's very much an everyman -- you will see yourself in Ivan, unless you really do have an ego so big you can't even be brought to imagine facing your own death.
    • 4/5
      I bought this book because I only wanted to read "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". After finishing it, well all I can say is that only a Russian can write about someone imagining they are dying and all the thoughts that come with it!Ilyich is a successful man, a judge, who has everything a man could want - a nice dutiful wife, a beautiful daughter, a large furnished house and a good job of great responsibility. But then he starts to get pains and falls badly sick. Various doctors and quacks come and go, offering vastly different opinions as to his diagnosis and making him take all kinds of medicines (and charging him a great deal of money for the privilege). But Ilyich is convinced he's dying and he's convinced himself that his wife, daughter, colleagues and friends can't wait for him to die so they can help themselves to whatever they want. As Ilyich worsens (aggravated by his rapidly deteriorating state of mind), he realises that he doesn't really have good relations with anyone and he begins to view the world through a different light.Not Tolstoy's best work by far but still a good little story if you like Russian literature of that time period. Not the most cheerful of subjects though!
    • 5/5
      Emotional classic, I felt sad for Ivan going thru what he had gone through. Whenever I read a book/story shared by dying people or told on their behalves, it makes me reflect on my own life and life in general. You start to think of the true meaning, the purpose of everything around you. great read.
    • 5/5
      I felt a lot of trepidation going into my first Russian novel. I have heard, and myself joked for years, about such massive tomes as War and Peace, full of hundreds of characters and thousands of pages. Luckily, and not by choice, I picked up the much shorter The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which clocks in at a reasonable novella link of 99 pages, and the Bantam Classics version has a 34 page introduction by Ronald Blythe. I'm glad I did. While this was published in 1886, it contains observations about life and death that are still relevant over one hundred and thirty years later.Author Leo Tolstoy was going through a bit of a spiritual crisis after his publication of Anna Karenina. He didn't write any fiction for nine years, obsessed with his own mortality as family members around him were dying or ill. His reactions to their passing is mirrored in this novella- the story of a high court judge who is blindsided by a terminal illness, and the selfishness of friends and family who surround him.The opening pages are almost comical, as friends gather to pay their respects after Ivan's death (no spoiler, it's the title of the book!). His widow is fishing for government pension assistance while Ivan's body is lying in domestic state, and other friends are put out because the funeral service is cutting into their nightly card game. There's a meme floating around, asking why someone would keep working for companies that will simply replace you if you died tomorrow, and I was reminded of that as I read the opening pages. We are then given a brief sketch of Ivan's life, and we find out he was actually a decent guy. He works his way up to being a high court judge, fair and balanced and very popular. His home life is a mess. He has two surviving children (two died very young), and a wife he has come to loathe. He is financially strapped, despite his high profile job and higher wages, spending too much money on a suite of apartments to appease the high society he has become a part of. After banging his side, and not getting it treated, he begins feeling pain but works through it. He consults doctors too late, as his injury goes from a simple bruise to a terminal illness, with learned doctors poking and prodding and blaming his excruciating pain on all sorts of ailments. He finds relief in his servant Gerasim, who cleans out his chamber pot and even let's Ivan rest his legs on his shoulders to provide relief. Ivan is drawn to this pure kind soul, as is the reader. Ivan gets worse, and soon he faces the most horrible thing someone dying can face- regret (as a follower of Gary Vaynerchuk, this also speaks to today's society, and again, was written one hundred and thirty years ago).Tolstoy's descriptions and plot are all compact and easy to understand. I was never overwhelmed by his literary style, only having to look up a few words a couple of times. The translation by Lynn Solotaroff is not awkward in the least, I kept forgetting that English was not the original language of the source material. Blythe's introduction does get wordy and bogs down here and there, but it is important to read first before starting the novella. Excellent background about how death was viewed in nineteenth century Russia, and how Tolstoy himself saw his own impending end ('we're all going to die so make the most out of this life' is another cornerstone mantra of Gary Vaynerchuk's inspirational and sometimes foul mouthed videos on YouTube) is covered. Tolstoy himself would eventually die in a rather bizarre way, alone at a train station, where he had fled to escape the materialism that surrounded him, longing for a simpler existence.I'm still weary of reading giant epic Russian novels. I received this book in a batch of classics off of eBay for pennies a tome, but I am glad I read this one. The first book completed of the new year, and already one of the best! I give The Death of Ivan Ilyich (* * * * 1/2) out of five stars.
    • 3/5
      I read this for my World Lit II class. Actually, I read it twice. I read two different translations, because I wasn't satisfied with the one that was in my text book. I found another, and I liked it a lot better. Translation does make a difference.Poor Ivan Ilyich. I wasn't too crazy about this, but I understand its importance in literature. So many writers that came later have been influenced by this little novel! It's amazing how Tolstoy was able to capture all these emotions of human suffering and dying. I gave it three stars because it wasn't really all that life-changing or inspirational to me personally, but I'm glad to have read it. Twice, even!
    • 5/5
      Una crónica del dolor de deslizarnos hacia la muerte cuando dudamos de haber vivido correctamente.
    • 5/5
      Absolute Masterpiece

      Beyond my ability to use superlatives how incredible this short book is on delving into the relative importance of life, marriage, family, career, and death.
    • 4/5
      Ending was tremendously uplifting and affirming. For an agnostic, the religious theme was universal and spoke to the the humanistic Tolstoy even in his later work.
    • 5/5
      WOW WOW WOW!!!!! What a masterpiece on death and dying!
    • 4/5
      4 1/2 stars. Somewhat disturbing but very moving novella of the thoughts and emotions of a dying man.
    • 2/5
      Summer 2018, Audiobook:

      I wanted to love this one more than I actually did end up loving it. It's hard to like Ivan Ilych, which I think is a large part of the point of this book. He makes a lot of not-great choices, which alienate him from everyone except coworkers, and doesn't really even engender them to have affection, so much as just genial respect for him. I don't regret picking this up at the steal of a deal sale price, but I am glad I didn't end up paying full price for it.
    • 5/5
      This novella is a reflection on the meaning or purpose of life. I have no idea why I didn't read it sooner, I should have. It's beautifully written and easy to understand and doesn't even require much time. It's a fabulous introduction to Tolstoy, too.Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      A dark take that exposes the futility of living an unexamined life. The novella deals with the forces of civilization's expectations of us and the horror that life can become if we don't take responsibility for our own destiny.
    • 5/5
      There were many good points in Tolstoy's little story, such as the inadequacy of doctors, our focus on becoming persons of power and importance, and our marrying not for love but material reasons.IIvan Ilyich suffered a lot of pain before he died; but the story was not entitled "the illness" or "the pain" of Ivan Ilyich, but "the death of Ivan Ilyich".I found it significant that some time before his death Ivan gained the insight that he had not lived his life correctly; he had been focused on irrelevancies and not the real values of life. He had had promptings from his soul, or God, if you will, about things in his life he should have changed, but these he ignored.He realized now that only his little son whom he had always pitied, loved him. And his servant Gerasim also had compassion for him, but not his wife or others in the family.Ivan had a little medal on his watch chain inscribed "Respice finem" (look to the end). And it is the actual "death" that is significant.Like most people, Ivan had been afraid of death, but as soon as he accepted the pain, he could not find the fear."There was no more fear because there was no more death.""Instead of death there was light, "What joy!" says Ivan.With this story Tolstoy is giving us a crucial message - there is no death, when our body dies, we go into the light.
    • 5/5
      Surprisingly readable. Sometimes very funny, other times quite dark. This novella progresses very quickly, and unfortunately ends too soon – which is probably the ultimate compliment to any work. On a deeper level, there may be a serious lesson to learn about appreciating the value of life as opposed to simply living in a superficial state of complacency with the mundane. A fantastic introduction to the works of Tolstoy.
    • 2/5
      Brief history of a man's life and death. I thought, unless I am missing something, it was a book of nothing.
    • 4/5
      Tolstoy's look at a man who is dying. We do not what has caused Ivan Ilyich long slide to death, yet we know what he thinks and feels about it.
    • 1/5
      This is a 2.5 hour audio book. I quit with an hour to go because I just couldn't stand the tedium any more.I've decided that Russian literature is not my thing.
    • 4/5
      A tale sadder on its grasp of life than death, Tolstoy’s masterfully written short story The Death of Ivan Ilyich copes with life’s disappointments through work. As much as this work provides luxuries and to an extent a type of happiness, its toxic offer of escapism seeps through everything that seems to be in place. Work becomes life’s sole meaning that the meaning itself, in the end, becomes worthless and nil. Until then it silently rearranges everything into an impending loss and catastrophe; it grabs and shakes until it receives different payments on its dues. Suddenly, it is too late. Hate turns out to be the last guest and death becomes a relief. Of empty relationships along the shoreline of senseless living, The Death of Ivan Ilyich reminds of what we all seem to forget: work is not everything. This short story is accompanied by the equally beautiful Three Deaths where death, together with nature, takes its own course in claiming what it owns. In these two stories, Tolstoy gives death a relevance, a different reputation; its afters possibly better than the (wasted and abandoned) life itself.
    • 5/5
      Throughout recorded time, humans have wondered about the afterlife and its relationship to this life. Tolstoy takes a spin on that and focuses on the interface between the two. What exactly happens as one approaches death? Few have experienced near-death, but no one has experienced death fully. What is dying like?Tolstoy provides his answer in this short depiction of a Russian lawyer Ivan Ilych. He lives a normal, even boring, life and suddenly gets sick. His performance at work suffers, and his family gawks at him. He experiences pain and after much contemplation, decides that there is no meaning in death. He is offered last rites. Eventually, he dies saying to himself, “Death is finished… It is no more!”, and the book ends.Throughout this process, we readers peer into his inner life. We see his uncertainty and curiosity about death. In twenty-first century parlance, he grieves his own death as he comes to accept his mortality. At one point, he thinks, “There is no explanation! Agony, death… What for?” He also reflects on the quality of his life and decides that he lived a good life.Tolstoy offers readers the opportunity to examine their own experience and to accept, albeit incompletely, their own finitude. He writes in the Christian tradition even though much of this work applies to those outside this faith. He takes no position on the existence of an afterlife, either positively or negatively. Instead, he focuses on what a (good?) death consists of and how human nature reacts when approaching death.This classical yet modern statement about how humans approach death helps readers detach from their own emotions towards death. By observing Ivan Ilych, we readers observe ourselves and the prejudices we carry towards death on the basis of our own experiences. Thus, Tolstoy offers us a liturgy of sorts. He allows us to play out the drama over and over in this short novella. In so doing, he seeks to allow us to embrace life more fully. That job is accomplished through his strongly asserted words. The rest is up to us.
    • 4/5
      Bought and read this book over the weekend in Montreal. I was really enchanted by the portrayal of Ivan's decline and death, being so detailed. I really empathize with his struggle to understand death as a thing that truly applies to / effects him. The descriptive quality (as noted by many other readers) of Tolstoy's prose was readily apparent, and I enjoyed it immensely. For sure, this is one that begs to be re-read. I'm especially interested in revisiting the 1st chapter, which is from the perspective of his "friends" who, greedy for his social position, callously snub his funeral and bereaved wife. Highly recommended for those interested in getting into Russian lit since it is so short and sweet.
    • 4/5
      The subject of this short classic is the process of dying and finally, acceptance of death. It's a look into the mind of a dying man who had lived an ordinary life as a high-court judge, had a family and friends, and had not given much thought about dying some day. After being ill for a long time, he realizes that he will never get well again and uses the time to reflect and question how well he lived his life. Was it meaningful? He struggles with redemption and forgiveness as all of us would in his situation.I felt it was depressing about Ivan's agonizing end. The novel was written in 1886 and was easy to read. Leo Tolstoy put lots of meaning into a short novel and gave me plenty to think about.
    • 4/5
      This novella opens with a scene reminiscent of the one shown to Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Ivan Ilyich has died, and his friends, colleagues, and relations gather for the funeral, but also to advance their own interests. Who will be promoted into his old position? Can his wife wrangle a better pension out of the government? And the weekly card game will go on as scheduled, won’t it? The reader then gets a survey of Ivan’s life, from school days, to married life, through career advancements, and through the illness that eventually leads to his death. There’s a lot of focus on the big questions: why death, and why pain? Did Ivan lead the life he was meant to lead? What if he got it all wrong?One gets the sense that Tolstoy was working through his thoughts on these matters. It would be silly to say that I “enjoyed” this book, but I appreciated it (though, when it comes to the Russians, I’ll take Dostoyevsky over Tolstoy any day). It’s a big subject for such a small volume; I’m glad I finally read it, though I probably won’t read it again.
    • 4/5
      The book is nothing more about than the life and death of an ordinary everyday man but Tolstoy was able to write this almost like a poem, beautifully and emotionally.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful from the start, where a colleague goes to the main character's funeral out of a sense of duty and the small inner dialogues and inner calculations that go on about Iván Ilyich's death, back through the (rather vapid) life of Ivan.Wonderful writing.
    • 5/5
      Nice. Very nice short story. A lot of self-reflection, which is right up my street, as it were.