The book examines the non-fiction works of Leo Tolstoy: diaries, correspondence, “Confession,” autobiographical fragments and the treatise “So What Should We Do?” This is an analysis of how, throughout his life, Tolstoy tried to describe and define his “I”, creating a narrative adequate in structure to the very process of being - not literature, but a kind of book of life. For Tolstoy, this was a project full of philosophical, moral and religious meaning. Irina Paperno is a philologist, literary critic, historian of ideas, professor in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.