The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy · 1886
In 70 pages Tolstoy does what most writers cannot do in 700: he makes you feel what dying is actually like. Ivan Ilyich lived a perfectly ordinary, perfectly respectable life — and in the moment of death discovers it was all wrong. The most devastating novella in any language.
The case against
Tolstoy hands down the verdict early: Ivan's life was ordinary, therefore terrible. Everything afterward is sentencing. The supporting cast exists to be shallow, the deathbed light arrives exactly when the sermon requires it, and the whole machine works only if you accept the judge. It does work. You are still being preached at, expertly.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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