'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

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.