Read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy in Russian

In Interlinear, the Russian text is followed by an English translation below each word or phrase.

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How the Interlinear translation method works
How the Interlinear translation method works, vertical display

Interlinear is like subtitles for books…

Explanation of the Interlinear method in two steps
Explanation of the Interlinear method in two steps
More about Interlinear

What is The Death of Ivan Ilyich about?

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Смерть Ивана Ильича) is a story of a person's life, death and attempts to confront the truth about oneself. It aims to address the question: should we live by our own rules or accept or accept society's expectations? This novella is one of Tolstoy's masterpieces, and it is considered to be among the most important works in Russian literature.

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Leo Tolstoy's existentialist novella!

Leo Tolstoy was a 19th century Russian writer, widely considered one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy wrote realistic fiction, which included such well known works as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Praised by millions of readers and authors in the likes of Dostoyevsky or Nabokov, Tolstoy has come to nearly define the Russian literary canon.

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How was this Russian translation made?

Literal but understandable

This Russian book translates words one by one and literally except where this would harm understanding. For example, take a look at this phrase:

Ты You
очень very much
страда́ешь? are suffering?

The more usual translation of this phrase would be are you suffering much?. The current English word order is slightly clumsy but, despite that, the English phrase is clearly understandable as is. Because of that, we have left it intact.

But see if this poses more of a challenge:

Тебе́ To you
что something
де́лать to do
на́до needed
ещё? still?

As you can see, in some instances, if translated literally, the phrase would be rather hard to understand. Thus we chose a more understandable translation:

Тебе́ что де́лать на́доDo you need to do something
ещё?still?

This Interlinear book includes:

  • 120 standard-book pages
  • over 18 thousand translated words and expressions
  • a separately available Russian-only version of the text to get additional practice after having read the text with the Interlinear translation
  • files in the printable or electronically readable PDF format, as well as MOBI and EPUB format files for Kindles and other e-book readers, tablets, and phones - all immediately available to download
  • (optionally available) Russian stress marks, teaching you to pronounce the words!

Available to order right now.

$14.99e-book

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