Although almost everyone recognizes Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, hardly anyone knows much about the man. What kind of person could have created this universal image, one that so vividly expressed all the uncertainties of the twentieth century? What kind of experiences did he have? In this book, the first comprehensive biography of Edvard Munch in English, Sue Prideaux brings the artist fully to life. Combining a scholar’s precision with a novelist’s insight, she explores the events of his turbulent life and unerringly places his experiences in their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual contexts. With unlimited access to tens of thousands of Munch’s papers, including his letters and diaries, Prideaux offers a portrait of the artist that is both intimate and moving. Munch sought to paint what he experienced rather than what he saw, and as his life often veered out of control, his experiences were painful. Yet he painted throughout his long life, creating strange and dramatic works in which hysteria and violence lie barely concealed beneath the surface. An extraordinary genius, Munch connects with an audience that reaches around the world and across more than a century.

Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream

Arts & Photography

Prideaux, Sue

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

The biography of the artist who created the most haunting icon of the twentieth century Although almost everyone recognizes Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, hardly anyone knows much about the man. What kind of person could have created this universal image, one that so vividly expressed all the uncertainties of the twentieth century? What kind of experiences did he have? In this book, the first comprehensive biography of Edvard Munch in English, Sue Prideaux brings the artist fully to life. Combining a scholar’s precision with a novelist’s insight, she explores the events of his turbulent life and unerringly places his experiences in their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual contexts. With unlimited access to tens of thousands of Munch’s papers, including his letters and diaries, Prideaux offers a portrait of the artist that is both intimate and moving. Munch sought to paint what he experienced rather than what he saw, and as his life often veered out of control, his experiences were painful. Yet he painted throughout his long life, creating strange and dramatic works in which hysteria and violence lie barely concealed beneath the surface. An extraordinary genius, Munch connects with an audience that reaches around the world and across more than a century.

Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Novelist, satirist, poet, photographer, painter, alchemist, and hellraiser—August Strindberg was all these, and yet he is principally known, in Arthur Miller's words, as "the mad inventor of modern theater" who led playwriting out of the polite drawing room into the snakepit of psychological warfare. This biography, supported by extensive new research, describes the eventful and complicated life of one of the great literary figures in world literature. Sue Prideaux organizes Strindberg's story into a gripping and highly readable narrative that both illuminates his work and restores humor and humanity to a man often shrugged off as too difficult.
Best known for his play Miss Julie, Strindberg wrote sixty other plays, three books of poetry, eighteen novels, and nine autobiographies. Even more than most, Strindberg is a writer whose life sheds invaluable light on his work. Prideaux explores Strindberg's many art-life connections, revealing for the first time the originals who inspired the characters of Miss Julie and her servant Jean, the bizarre circumstances in which the play was written, and the real suicide that inspired the shattering ending of the play. Recounting the playwright's journey through the "real" world as well as the world of belief and ideas, Prideaux marks the centenary of Strindberg's death in 1912 with a biography worthy of the man who laid the foundation for Western drama through the twentieth century and even into the twenty-first.

Strindberg: A Life

A mesmerizing account of the chaotic life and brilliant work of a playwright whose influence is undiminished 100 years after his death Novelist, satirist, poet, photographer, painter, alchemist, and hellraiser—August Strindberg was all these, and yet he is principally known, in Arthur Miller's words, as "the mad inventor of modern theater" who led playwriting out of the polite drawing room into the snakepit of psychological warfare. This biography, supported by extensive new research, describes the eventful and complicated life of one of the great literary figures in world literature. Sue Prideaux organizes Strindberg's story into a gripping and highly readable narrative that both illuminates his work and restores humor and humanity to a man often shrugged off as too difficult.
Best known for his play Miss Julie, Strindberg wrote sixty other plays, three books of poetry, eighteen novels, and nine autobiographies. Even more than most, Strindberg is a writer whose life sheds invaluable light on his work. Prideaux explores Strindberg's many art-life connections, revealing for the first time the originals who inspired the characters of Miss Julie and her servant Jean, the bizarre circumstances in which the play was written, and the real suicide that inspired the shattering ending of the play. Recounting the playwright's journey through the "real" world as well as the world of belief and ideas, Prideaux marks the centenary of Strindberg's death in 1912 with a biography worthy of the man who laid the foundation for Western drama through the twentieth century and even into the twenty-first.

Humor & Entertainment

<div>Who was the man behind&nbsp;The Scream,&nbsp;the iconic painting that so acutely expresses the anguish of the twentieth century? Edvard Munch (1863 - 1944) was twenty-eight when he embarked on a lifelong effort to paint his 'soul's diary' - and began a perverse love affair with self-destruction. This intimate and moving life of the Norwegian artist explores his turbulent early years, his time as a recluse, and his intense efforts to paint not what he saw, but what he experienced. &nbsp;</div>

Both Oscarsson brothers have fine wives—Charlotta is pretty and elegant, while Moscow-born Katya is regarded as salacious and troubled. When Katya vanishes in San Francisco, Charotta is left with the pieces—and with the daughter, the second Katya, who burns as brilliantly as her mother.

Magnetic North

Literature & Fiction

Little, Brown Book Group

I Am Dynamite

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Faber Non Fiction

The Times Biography of the Year Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019 'Outstanding.' The Sunday Times 'A revelation.' Guardian 'Wonderful.' The Times 'Riveting.' New Statesman
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. Sue Prideaux's myth-shattering book brings readers into the world of a brilliant, eccentric and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand Nietzsche, the philosopher who foresaw - and sought solutions to - our own troubled times.

I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche

Historical

Faber&Faber

Paul Gauguin's legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings as from his biography. But as Sue Prideaux reveals in this gorgeously illustrated, myth-busting work, although Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved. Self-taught, he became a towering artist in his brief life, not just in painting but in ceramics and woodcuts. He fled the bustle of Paris for the beauty of Tahiti, where he lived simply and worked consistently to expose the tragic results of French colonialism. His unconventional career and bold, breathtaking art influenced Van Gogh, Matisse, and Picasso. Through new primary research, Prideaux upends much of what we thought we knew about Gauguin, including the pernicious myth of his syphilis, and illuminates the extraordinary oeuvre of a visionary artist vital to the French avant-garde.

Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin

W.W.Norton&Company

NEW YORK TIMES Editors’ Choice • THE TIMES BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR • WINNER OF THE HAWTHORNDEN PRIZE A groundbreaking new biography of philosophy’s greatest iconoclast Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most enigmatic figures in philosophy, and his concepts—the Übermensch, the will to power, slave morality—have fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the human condition. But what do most people really know of Nietzsche—beyond the mustache, the scowl, and the lingering association with nihilism and fascism? Where do we place a thinker who was equally beloved by Albert Camus, Ayn Rand, Martin Buber, and Adolf Hitler? Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings readers into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. From his placid, devoutly Christian upbringing—overshadowed by the mysterious death of his father—through his teaching career, lonely philosophizing on high mountains, and heart-breaking descent into madness, Prideaux documents Nietzsche’s intellectual and emotional life with a novelist’s insight and sensitivity. She also produces unforgettable portraits of the people who were most important to him, including Richard and Cosima Wagner, Lou Salomé, the femme fatale who broke his heart; and his sister Elizabeth, a rabid German nationalist and anti-Semite who manipulated his texts and turned the Nietzsche archive into a destination for Nazi ideologues. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.

I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche

Tim Duggan Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Prideaux, Sue. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Prideaux, Sue

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Prideaux, Sue. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream

Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream

Strindberg: A Life

Strindberg: A Life

Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream

Magnetic North

I Am Dynamite

I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche

Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin

I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche