Goethe - by A N Wilson (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

** A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR **

'Wild, brilliant and has all the intelligence to rival its subject. Five Stars.' - Frances Wilson, The Telegraph
'Exuberant and wide-ranging' - Literary Review
'Passionate' - The Times

A spellbinding recreation of Goethe's life and work from one of our greatest biographers.

Goethe was the inventor of the psychological novel, a pioneer scientist, great man of the theatre and a leading politician. As A. N. Wilson argues in this groundbreaking biography, it was his genius and insatiable curiosity that helped catapult the Western world into the modern era.

A N. Wilson tackles the life of Goethe with characteristic wit and verve. From his youth as a wild literary prodigy to his later years as Germany's most respected elder statesman, Wilson hones in on Goethe's undying obsession with the work he would spend his entire life writing - Faust.

Goethe spent over 60 years writing his retelling of Faust, a strange and powerful work that absorbed all the philosophical questions of his time as well as the revolutions and empires that came and went. It is his greatest work, but as Wilson explores, it is also something much more - it is the myth of how we came to be modern.

Review Quotes

"Rich and full and passionate and intelligent and deeply needed for these murky times." --Ben Okri

"characteristically provocative and accessible... Splendid on the social detail and the facts of Goethe's life." --Literary Review

"Exuberant and wide-ranging" --Miranda Seymour, author of The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys

"Wilson's Goethe is a serious work in an increasingly trivial time, a book that sheds light - mehr Licht! - as the age darkens. For that much, and for the so much more that it offers, it is to be treasured." --John Banville, the New Statesman

"A. N. Wilson's biography of the German polymath is wild, brilliant and has all the intelligence to rival its subject" --Frances Wilson, the Telegraph

"[...] this is a wonderful book. You really will understand Faust better after reading it." --Ferdinand Mount, The Oldie

"[...] engaging about Goethe's influence on Freud." --The New York Times

About the Author

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is one of the outstanding biographers of our time - his biographies of Tolstoy, C. S. Lewis, Milton and Hilaire Belloc are beyond compare.

In 2007, Wilson's novel, Winnie and Wolf, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and in 2020 The Mystery of Charles Dickens was published to great critical acclaim. He lives in North London.