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.
Leo Tolstoy (9 September – 20 November 1910), was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909. That he never won is a major controversy.