The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a high court judge who has never given the certainty of his dying much of a thought. But one day, death comes to him in the shape of abrupt illness, and to his shocked agony and surprise, he is now forced to deal with his own mortality. This novella by Tolstoy plunges us into the gloom of death but also raises us up into the light of life and spiritual transcendence: 'He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. 'Where is it? What death?' There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.'