Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Story of My Experiments with Truth is the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi, covering his life from early childhood through to 1921. It traces his childhood in India, his experiences of racial discrimination in South Africa, the development of his philosophy of Satyagraha, and his early campaigns for Indian independence.
Gandhi wrote his autobiography in 166 weekly installments published in his journal Navajivan from the 25th of November 1925 to the 3rd of February 1929. English translations appeared simultaneously in his journal Young India and were reprinted in Indian Opinion in South Africa and the American journal Unity.
Mahadev Desai translated the autobiography from Gujarati into English. Chapters XXIX through XLIII of Part V were translated by Desai's friend and colleague Pyarelal Nayyar. An English scholar also revised the translation but declined to have his name published.
Gandhi began writing at the insistence of his close co-workers, led by Swami Anand, who wanted him to explain the background of his public campaigns. He initially refused a book format and agreed only to a serialized form. He stated his purpose was not to write a real autobiography but to narrate his experiments with truth and his spiritual and moral experiments rather than political ones.
Gandhi wrote that the three most important modern influences on his life were Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You, published in 1894, John Ruskin's Unto This Last, and the poet Shrimad Rajchandra, also known as Raychandbhai.
George Orwell, in his 1949 essay "Reflections on Gandhi," called the autobiography "not a literary masterpiece" but argued it was more impressive because of the commonplaceness of its material. He saw it as evidence that Gandhi possessed natural physical courage and was a shrewd, able person who could have succeeded as a lawyer, administrator, or businessman. In 1998 a committee of global spiritual and religious authorities named it one of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the 20th Century.