I didn’t enjoy this book at all. It was sooo dry.
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Absolutely his best. The Kreutzer Sonata is way ahead of its time and shows, that in essence nothing has changed. When reading this book, listen to Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. It will help to understand the turmoil and depth of this novel. ( )

This was my first glance into Tolstoy's fiction, and as I expected, I was blown away by his writing. The Death of Ivan Ilyich really captures human depravity and societal indifference to others. Ivan's personal and professional lives hardly serve any other function than to build and reinforce his appearance, and are therefore essentially meaningless; he lacks emotion and sincerity and compassion and love and oh so many things that are essential to life. Finally, all is rectified through a sort of spiritual rebirthing that can only be facilitated through death. The paradoxical nature of the story and the main character's relationships with others are brilliantly crafted and thought provoking. ( )

Contains "How Much Land Does a Man Need?", "The Death of Ivan Ilych", and "The Kreutzer Sonata". Modern writers rarely lavish attention on describing human emotion. Tolstoy writes extensively on the agonies of a man who does not love his wife, but is still tormented by jealousy. In "The Death of Ivan Ilych", Tolstoy presents the thoughts of a dying man who questions his conventional life as a bureaucrat. ( )