Over the weekend, I had the chance to read The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy.
My favorite quote of the book hit home really hard, as I posted a few days ago.
I cannot recommend it enough. It’s an eye-opening short novel that can be read in a couple of hours and can have a profound effect on you. Here is it’s description:
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?
This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy’s life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.
A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.