Born in Russia on September 9, 1828, Leo Tolstoy grew up to become a novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright and philosopher. Known for his paradoxical persona and extreme moralistic and ascetic views, he became a social reformer and a moral thinker in the 1870s. In his short autobiographical story, A Confession (1882), Tolstoy reflects on his mid-life existential crisis. In his later works, he concentrated on Christian themes. The Russian society in which he lived is depicted realistically in his fictions. Apart from drawing from his own life experiences, Tolstoy was very imaginative. Characters such as Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei in War and Peace, Levin in Anna Karenina and Price Nekhlyudov in Resurrection are memorable literary characters. He died of pneumonia at a train station in 1910, at the age of 82.