The Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, and is considered to be one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s. The novella tells the story of the life and death, at the age of 45, of a high-court judge in 19th-century Russia—a miserable husband, proud father, and upwardly-mobile member of Russia's professional class, the object of Tolstoy's unremitting satire. Living what seems to be a good life; his dreadful relationship with his wife notwithstanding, Ivan Ilyich Golovin bangs his side while putting up curtains in a new apartment intended to reflect his family's superior status in society. Within weeks, he has developed a strange taste in his mouth and a pain that will not go away. Numerous expensive doctors—friends of friends of friends—are visited in their surgeries or called to the judge's bedside, but beyond muttering about blind gut and floating kidneys, they can neither explain nor treat his condition, and it soon becomes clear that Ivan Ilyich is dying.
这篇小说描写的是伊凡•伊里奇从生病到死去这一段时间里所经历的一切，重点描述了他在肉体病痛和精神困惑的双重袭击下的挣扎和反思。伊凡•伊里奇一直活跃在上流社会，处事圆滑，平步青云。有一天，他发现自己身患绝症，之前对于死亡的认识也陷于崩溃。被亲人孤立的他陷入极度的孤独之中，开始了对生活的思索和生命意义的追问......