I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche

I’m not normally one for biographies but I read two excellent ones this year (the other being Ruth Franklin’s Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life). This one though, the excellent telling of the life of one of Philosophy’s, and indeed Literature’s, greatest practitioners, the titan that was Frederick Nietzsche, I simply have to call attention to. 

Meticulously researched, scholarly but never stuffy, it makes the life of Nietzsche an intellectual page-turner, recommended not only for fans of the great thinker, but anyone curious about one of the most remarkable intellectuals we were lucky to have tread our planet.

Probably this is my favourite and by far the saddest.

The life of Friedich Nietzsche is absolutely essential to understanding his work – perhaps to a greater extent than in any other philosopher. Everything is told here, from the time of his friendship with Wagner, his personal and physical crises and his failed attempts at marriage.

Prideaux's book reads like a novel, although Nietzsche's life is itself a tragic novel. Although it is not a detailed analysis of Nietzsche's Philosophy, this book helps to better understand the work of an essential philosopher to understand the current era.