I read my first Tolstoy, here are my thoughts.

In preparation to reading Anna Karenina and War and Peace I wanted to first read a short Tolstoy book. But I was not expecting to like this one as much as I did. I read the Death of Ivan Ilyich.

This book is short. So much so that I wad able to read it in just a few hours. But it was filled with absolute truth and pain and beauty that I could not reading.

From the very beginning you know that Ivan Ilyich story ends in his death. From there, Tolstoy develops the how and more painfully, the why. Ilyich’s story is painful, he suffers from a chronic and fatal illness that will kill him but will also make his time on earth painful.

His monotonous life is filled with absurd doctor visits, inconvenient conversation and just the wait of death. For a time that is all there is; waiting death. Ivan does not want that, he wishes to survive. But he won’t. Death is inevitable.

And the realisation of death is more painful that the illness he suffers.

This book filled me with so much dread that it struck me with reality. We are all going to die. Some of us will suffer and that is reality.

It was a beautiful novel that will be with me for a long time. Tolstoy has already become a new favourite author, telling me a story of the inevitability of death and the unjust truth of life.