The Death of Ivan Ilych

This book deals with the death of well, Ivan Ilych and its focus is mainly on the inevitably of death, how people deal with it, the frustrations and sufferings of the protagonist, how he himself copes or at least tries to with death, as well as his regrets about a life wasted.

To me, while the book is excellent especially with how well it deals with the character's thoughts about death, him slowly realizing that there is no coming back from what he is suffering and how he first tries to play the seriousness of his disease down. It does that very well.

But there is another element, a universality of Ilych's experience that is evident in the sufferings of people around us and this book just describes it to perfection.