. . . Shapiro's book is bursting with thoughts, and if one is willing to mine them, one is sure to find items of interest or provocation. -The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Taking issue with a widely held view that Nietzsche's writings are essentially fragmentary or aphoristic, Gary Shapiro focuses on the narrative mode that Nietzsche adopted in many of his works. Such themes as eternal recurrence, the question of origins, and the problematics of self-knowledge are reinterpreted in the context of the narratives in which Nietzsche develops or employs them.