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The Death of Ivan Ilyich

of Lev Tolstói

available here

Synopsis

Starting with the death of the protagonist and his wake, this novel tells the story of Ivan Ilyich’s life right up to his final moments. Having built up a career as an examining magistrate in the Russian bureaucracy, married for convenience and started a family, Ivan Ilyich has achieved a
comfortable position. However, he is taken by surprise when he falls seriously ill, which turns his existence upside down, forcing him to confront his condition as a mortal and the meaninglessness of his life. An indispensable classic, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in Boris
Schnaiderman’s renowned translation, takes on new contours in the voice of musician Juliana Perdigão.

Genres

why we recorded it

Considered one of the most well-constructed novels in the history of literature, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” is a unique narrative in which, in just a few pages (or a few hours of audio), we follow the rise and fall of a character who, throughout his life, has tried to avoid any inconvenience that might bring up deeper issues about his condition. The protagonist’s illness leads his relatives to isolate him inside his own home, and stirs up competition among his colleagues for the position he holds, while forcing the examining magistrate to face––nearly alone––the anguish of his approaching death. By showing this in great detail, Tolstoy shrewdly examines bourgeois and bureaucratic life in Tsarist Russia, showing the hypocrisy that governs it. Despite the distance in space and time, the corrosive criticisms in the smallest details of this plot still seem relevant to Brazilian readers today.

An indispensable classic, this novel, in Boris Schnaiderman’s renowned translation, takes on new contours in the voice of musician Juliana Perdigão. Both first-time readers and those already familiar with the work can follow along in the audiobook edition, produced by Supersônica under exclusive license from Editora 34, the narration of the memorable scenes in this work that makes us search for meaning in our own existence, between health and illness, life and death.

Lev Tolstói read by Juliana Perdigão

Juliana Perdigão is a composer, singer, musician, producer, performer and sound artist. She has performed in collaboration with various artists in music, theater, performance, literature, dance and visual arts for over twenty years. She devotes her artistic work to the search for interconnections between sound, words and performance. Juliana Perdigão has released four albums: "Álbum desconhecido" (2012), "Ó" (2016), "Folhuda" (2019) and "Dúvidas" (2020).

author Lev Tolstói

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born in 1828 in Russia. In 1845, he entered the University of Kazan to study Oriental Languages, but dropped out, moving to Moscow and then to St. Petersburg. In 1851, he served in the Russian army in the Caucasus and began his writing career. He later married Sofia Andréievna Behrs, with whom he had thirteen children. Between 1865 and 1878, Tolstoy published a series of world literary classics that made him famous in the literary field, such as War and Peace and Anna Kariênina. At the height of his success, however, the writer suffered from recurrent existential crises that led him to adopt a social-religious stance known as “Tolstoyism.” In 1919, at the age of 82, Tolstoy ran away from home to retire to a monastery, but he died of pneumonia on the way to his destination.

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