Death of Ivan Ilyitch
Author: first_name: Leo
last_name: Tolstoy
Language: English
Year: 1886

<i>The Death of Ivan Ilyitch</i> is the story of a socially ambitious middle-aged judge who contracts an unexplained and untreatable illness.  As Ivan Ilyitch is forced to face the death he fears, he asks himself whether the life he thought was so correct was, in fact, a moral life after all.  Written after Tolstoy's religious conversion, the novella is widely considered to be one of his masterpieces.  (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)