Friedrich Nietzsche's work rocked the foundation of Western thinking and continues to permeate our culture, high and low, yet he is one of history's most misunderstood philosophers. Also the biographer of Edvard Munch and August Strindberg, Sue Prideaux delves into the world of a brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. Perhaps more than any other writer of the 19th century, suggests Prideaux here, Nietzsche foresaw—and sought solutions to—the problems and concerns of our own troubled times.

"Nietzsche steps out of the mists of obfuscation and rumor, vividly evoked.... An attentive, scrupulous portrait."—New York Times