Augustine's Confessions is one of the most important works in the history of literature and Christian thought.
Written around 397, when Augustine was the Christian bishop of Hippo (in modern-day Algeria), the Confessions were designed both to spiritually educate those who already shared Augustine's faith, and to convert those who did not.
Augustine did this through the original maneuver of writing what is now recognized as being the first Western autobiographyletting readers share in his own experiences of youth, sin, and eventual conversion.