The Death of Ivan Ilych

He is an ordinary man experiencing an ordinary death after an ordinary life. Tolstoy presents the struggles Ivan Ilych experiences in life and death in a simple yet effective way as he experiences pain, loneliness, anger and eventually an end. While it took me until half way to really get into, it was a moving and thought provoking read.

There were interesting parallels between Ivan's perspective on his own impending death throughout most of the book and Peter Ivanovich's perspective that death is something that happens to other people and Iva can't accept until directly confronted with it. I also particularly liked Gerasim as he showed a sympathy towards Ivan's pain few other characters did, who chose instead to view him and his suffering as more of an inconvenience.