Even readers previously unconcerned with the questions and technicalities of translation will tell you that Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are incomparable translators of Russian into English. A diverse collection of short stories by Leo Tolstoy is the latest volume to benefit from the couple’s treatment. The Death Of Ivan Ilyich And Other Stories (Knopf, $28.95) is a beautiful hardcover edition of the Russian master’s short works. It draws from both the beginning and the end of Tolstoy’s ambivalent and divided writing career. The collection of eleven stories includes his autobiographical work, “Prisoner of the Caucasus,” and his return to the mountain setting of Chechnya and Dagestan for his final work, a cynical and anti-imperialist novella based on a real-life hero of holy war, “Hadji Murat.”