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Books by Sue Prideaux
Sue Prideaux is an award-winning biographer. Her first biography Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream (2005) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Strindberg: A Life (2012) won the Duff Cooper Prize, and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche (2018) was awarded the Hawthornden Prize, longlisted for the Cundill History Prize and Rathbones Folio Prize, shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Non-Fiction Crown and was the Times Biography of the Year. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages.
“What I loved about this book is that it takes you right into Nietzsche’s life. This is particularly important with him because the life and the work are not so easily separable. For Nietzsche, there’s a sense that his life is actually part of what he’s trying to do.” Read more...
The Best Philosophy Books of 2018
Nigel Warburton, Philosopher
Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream
by Sue Prideaux
🏆 Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in Biography
“She goes right back, in a very conventional structure, to relate an extremely unconventional life: Gauguin’s revolutionary grandmother, his beautiful artist mother, his growing up in France, but feeling himself to be alienated from it, ‘a savage from Peru’. She shows the comedy of his nature and character, coupled with, often, the extraordinary sadness of the reversals and sufferings that he endured…It’s also beautifully illustrated. There are wonderful juxtapositions—of Gauguin’s portrait of van Gogh with van Gogh’s portrait of Gauguin. There are intelligently, understatedly captioned, huge, luscious Gauguin paintings throughout the book. It’s a very pleasant, beautiful object to handle, to touch, as much as to look at.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2025 Duff Cooper Prize
Minoo Dinshaw, Biographer
Interviews with Sue Prideaux
Five Biographies of Artists, recommended by Sue Prideaux
From the Baroque painter who killed a man in Rome during the Counter-Reformation to the surrealist artist who left Britain and died in Mexico City in 2011, award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux talks to us about her favorite biographies of artists. Her new biography of Paul Gauguin, Wild Thing, is out this week and has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.
Interviews where books by Sue Prideaux were recommended
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1
Italy Reborn: From Fascism to Democracy
by Mark Gilbert -
2
Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World
by Kathryn Hughes -
3
The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
by Lucy Hughes-Hallett -
4
Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750
by Noel Malcolm -
5
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin
by Sue Prideaux -
6
Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion
by Michael Taylor
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2025 Duff Cooper Prize, recommended by Minoo Dinshaw
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2025 Duff Cooper Prize, recommended by Minoo Dinshaw
It’s a nonfiction book prize that values “style, rigour, argument, meatiness, readability, freshness, oddity and individuality,” says Minoo Dinshaw, author of Friends in Youth and one of this year’s judges. He introduces the six brilliant books that made the shortlist of this year’s Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, from the history of post-World War II Italy to the disputes caused by the discovery of dinosaur fossils.
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1
Nuclear War: A Scenario
by Annie Jacobsen -
2
Question 7
by Richard Flanagan -
3
The Story of a Heart
by Rachel Clarke -
4
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial
by Viet Thanh Nguyen -
5
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin
by Sue Prideaux -
6
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
by David Van Reybrouck
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Isabel Hilton
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Isabel Hilton
From nuclear war to a heartbreaking medical story, from the memoirs of novelists and the life of an artist to the struggle for independence in Indonesia, British journalist Isabel Hilton introduces the six books that made the shortlist of the UK’s most prestigious nonfiction prize.
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1
Patriot: A Memoir
by Alexei Navalny, translated by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel -
2
Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia
by Stephanie Baker -
3
Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich
by Richard J. Evans -
4
The Golden Road
by William Dalrymple -
5
The Peepshow: The Murders at Rillington Place
by Kate Summerscale
Notable Nonfiction Books of Fall 2024, recommended by Sophie Roell
Notable Nonfiction Books of Fall 2024, recommended by Sophie Roell
From the memoir of the brave politician who opposed Putin, to how the culture of ancient and early medieval India transformed the world, from a book about the people who surrounded Hitler, to a serial killer in 1950s London, Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books, introduces some of her favourite nonfiction books published in the last three months.
Five Biographies of Artists, recommended by Sue Prideaux
From the Baroque painter who killed a man in Rome during the Counter-Reformation to the surrealist artist who left Britain and died in Mexico City in 2011, award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux talks to us about her favorite biographies of artists. Her new biography of Paul Gauguin, Wild Thing, is out this week and has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.
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1
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny
by Kate Manne -
2
Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life
by Edith Hall -
3
I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche
by Sue Prideaux -
4
Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are
by John Kaag -
5
Being and Nothingness
by Jean-Paul Sartre & Sarah Richmond (translator)
The Best Philosophy Books of 2018, recommended by Nigel Warburton
The Best Philosophy Books of 2018, recommended by Nigel Warburton
What can Nietzsche and Aristotle teach us about how to live? Should everyone read Being and Nothingness? From a philosophical approach to misogyny to an interrogation of whether it’s morally acceptable to have a Facebook account, philosopher Nigel Warburton introduces us to the best philosophy books of 2018.