The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Ivan Ilyich has lived as one ought. He is respectable, professionally successful, and socially approved. His life has followed the expected course, shaped by correctness, propriety, and a quiet faith in order. When illness interrupts this carefully constructed existence, Ivan is forced into a reckoning he has long avoided — not simply with death, but with the life he has lived.

Written by Leo Tolstoy and first published in 1886, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is one of literature’s most exacting examinations of moral self-deception. With extraordinary restraint, Tolstoy exposes the habits that sustain ordinary success — the reliance on procedure, social performance, and reassurance to shield us from discomfort and truth. As Ivan’s world narrows, the novel becomes a devastating inquiry into professional identity, conformity, and the fear of meaninglessness that emerges when certainty fails.

This Celia Harrow annotated edition presents the text with concise chapter-end reflections that invite readers to pause and consider the novel’s enduring relevance, without diminishing Tolstoy’s severity or imposing interpretation.