Start with Beyond Good and Evil
Not Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is where almost everyone starts because it's the famous one. Zarathustra is written as mock scripture, in deliberately archaic German, full of parody that only lands if you already know what he's parodying. It's his best book and a terrible first one.
Beyond Good and Evil (1886) is the right door. It's aphoristic, it's direct, and it lays out the whole programme: the critique of morality, the suspicion of philosophers' motives, the will to power. If you like it, everything else opens up.
| Book | Year | What it does | Read it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beyond Good and Evil | 1886 | The overview. Attacks moral philosophy and the people who write it. | First. |
| On the Genealogy of Morals | 1887 | Three connected essays on where 'good' and 'evil' came from. His most sustained argument. | Second. It's the one philosophers actually cite. |
| The Gay Science | 1882 | Aphorisms, plus the first appearance of eternal recurrence and 'God is dead'. | Third, or any time. Dip in. |
| Twilight of the Idols | 1888 | A short, savage summary written in about a week. | Anytime. It's 100 pages and very funny. |
| Thus Spoke Zarathustra | 1883-85 | Philosophical novel in biblical parody. The Übermensch, eternal recurrence. | After the above. Not before. |
| The Birth of Tragedy | 1872 | His first, on Greek tragedy, Apollo and Dionysus. | If you care about art or classics. |
| Ecce Homo | written 1888 | Autobiography with chapter titles like 'Why I Am So Clever'. | Last. It's the sound of a mind coming apart, and it's magnificent. |
The Will to Power is not a Nietzsche book
Worth knowing before you buy it. The Will to Power was assembled after his collapse from his notebooks by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who was an antisemite and a German nationalist, both things her brother explicitly despised. She selected, arranged and in places altered material he'd discarded, then presented it as his masterwork.
Scholars have spent decades undoing the damage. The notebook material is real and sometimes valuable, but the book is an editorial construction with a political agenda. Read it late, knowing that, or read the Colli-Montinari notebook editions instead.
Which translation
Walter Kaufmann's translations are the standard and did more than anything else to rescue Nietzsche's English reputation from his sister. R.J. Hollingdale's are also excellent and often cheaper. The Cambridge Texts editions are the current scholarly choice, with better notes and more careful renderings of the difficult terms.
Avoid the free public-domain translations floating around online, which are mostly Thomas Common's from 1909 and are genuinely bad.
If you want him in smaller doses
Nietzsche is exhausting at length, which is partly the point. Our Nietzsche quotes guide covers the famous lines with sources, including the ones he never wrote.
365 Days of Philosophy gives him three days (will to power, eternal recurrence, the Übermensch) inside a year that runs from Thales to Žižek, one page each morning. It's the low-commitment way to find out whether he's for you before buying six of his books.
For neighbouring reading: Camus, who took the death of God as a starting problem rather than a punchline, and existentialism for beginners.
Common questions
Which Nietzsche book should I read first?
Beyond Good and Evil. It's direct, aphoristic, and lays out his whole programme. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is his best book and his worst starting point, because it's written as biblical parody.
Is The Will to Power by Nietzsche?
Not as a book. His sister Elisabeth assembled it from discarded notebooks after his collapse, arranging the material to suit her own nationalist politics. The notes are his; the book is hers.
What is the best Nietzsche translation?
Walter Kaufmann is the standard, R.J. Hollingdale is excellent and often cheaper, and the Cambridge Texts editions are the current scholarly choice. Skip the free 1909 Thomas Common versions.
How many books did Nietzsche write?
Around a dozen in fifteen productive years, from The Birth of Tragedy in 1872 to the works of 1888, before his collapse in January 1889.
Is Nietzsche hard to read?
Less than his reputation suggests, if you start in the right place. He wrote in aphorisms and jokes rather than systems. Zarathustra is the hard one.