In 1879 the fifty-year-old author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina came to believe that he had accomplished nothing in life. Either of these magnificant novels would have assured Tolstoy's permanent place in the annals of world literature, yet his achievement was not enough to give his life meaning.

Confession is an account of this spiritual crisis, marking a shift of Tolstoy's central focus from the aesthetic to the religious and philisophical.