This astonishing series of aphorisms, put into the mouth of the Persian sage Zarathustra, or Zoroaster,contains the kernel of Nietzsche’s thought. ‘God is dead’, he tells us. Christianity is decadent, leadingmankind into a slave morality concerned not with this life, but with the next. Nietzsche emphasises theÜbermensch, or Superman, whose will to power makes him the creator of a new heroic mentality. Theintensely felt ideas are expressed in prose-poetry of indefinable beauty.Though misused by the German National Socialist party as a spurious justification of their creed, the bookalso had a profound influence on early twentieth-century writers such as Shaw, Mann, Gide, Lawrence and Sartre.