A Confession

"With all my soul I longed to be in a position to join with the people in performing the rites of their faith, but I could not do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, mocking what was sacred to me, if I were to go through with it." At the height of his fame, a Tolstoy in his mid-fifties went through an existential crisis. Despite an accomplished writing career and a good family life, Tolstoy was considering suicide.
Instead, he wrote A Confession, which describes his search for the answer to the question, "What is the meaning of life?", making him one of the first to pose the problem it in a modern way. A Confession is an interesting and heart-wrenching essay for religious people and atheists alike. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian author, a master of realistic fiction and one of the world's greatest novelists.
Tolstoy's major works include "War and Peace" (1865-69) and "Anna Karenina" (1875-77), two of the greatest novels of all time and pinnacles of realist fiction. Beyond novels, he wrote many short stories and later in life also essays and plays.