'The one thing that is necessary, in life as in art,' Tolstoy once said,' is to tell the truth.'

The Gospel in Brief is one of the most challenging and unsettling interpretations of the significance of Jesus ever written, which has intrigued and unsettled Christians, agnostics and atheists alike. Leo Tolstoy believed that the existence of God could be neither proved nor disproved and that the meaning of life lay beyond the limits of our minds. After much suffering and study, Tolstoy came to believe that the answer to the riddle of how we should live well can be found in the teachings of Jesus.

The Gospel in Brief is his provocative synthesis of the four Gospels. Here, he believed, was the essential message of Jesus, a simple key to the good and purposeful life, with all the clutter and superstition of priests and theologians swept away.