Leo Tolstoy wrote this short meditation on sadness and the meaning of life when he was middle aged. He had already completed his masterworks, Anna Karenina and War and Peace , reared fourteen children, and gained fame and acclaim in Russia as a man of letters. But despite having attained that success, he still found himself unhappy and always returning to the disturbing idea that all achievement is meaningless.

A Confession is his attempt to put these thoughts in words as he teetered on the brink of suicide. It forms the first in a four-volume series that included A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology , The Gospel in Brief , and What I Believe (also known as My Religion or My Faith ).