The DO Book Club, October 2023: Facing Death: Leo Tolstoy and ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’

By The DO Staff

10.27.23

Leo Tolstoy’s best-known writings, “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” do not pack quite the punch found in his short novella, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” A powerful read, his novella remains a classic for narrative medicine, offering philosophical, religious, ethical and moral dilemmas and attempting to distinguish between right and wrong and good and evil. The narrative is an account of an ordinary man, Ivan Ilych, his struggle with a life wrongly lived and his ultimate realization of the meaning of life at death.

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