The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other StoriesAt the age of forty one, Leo Tolstoy (1828 1910) underwent a profound spiritual crisis, from which he emerged believing that he had encountered death itself. These seven compelling stories explore, in very different ways, his subsequent 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