The death of Ivan Ilyich and other stories

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a devastating account of a man fighting his inevitable end, and asks the existential question: why must a good person be taken before his time? In Polikushka, a light-fingered drunk's chance to prove himself has tragic repercussions, while Three Deaths depicts the last moments of an aristocrat, a peasant and a tree, and The Forged Coupon shows a seemingly minor offence that leads inexorably to ever more horrific crimes. And in three tales about soldiers, After the Ball, The Wood-felling and The Raid, Tolstoy portrays the brutality that all too often accompanies military life.