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