When Nietzsche Wept
Irvin D. Yalom

Narrated By: Richard Powers

Duration: 15 hours and 26 minutes

What to expect

In nineteenth-century Vienna, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment that defined the era. Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe’s greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him.

When he agrees to treat Nietzsche with his experimental “talking cure,” Breuer never expects that he too will find solace in their sessions. Only through facing his own inner demons can the gifted healer begin to help his patient. In When Nietzsche Wept, Irvin Yalom blends fact and fiction, atmosphere and suspense to unfold an unforgettable story about the redemptive power of friendship.

Genre

Fiction: general and literary, Historical fiction

Listen to a sample

“When Nietzsche Wept is the best dramatization of a great thinker’s thought since Sartre’s The Freud Scenario.”

“An intelligent, carefully researched, richly imagined novel.”

“Strong and authentic. The element of surprise is a magical, jolting moment.”

“Fascinating…A shrewd intellectual thriller.”

“In this intelligent, fully imagined tale, Yalom accurately evokes the encapsulated world of Breuer and Nietzsche’s sessions.”

“A stimulating dip into the pools of nineteenth-century philosophy, psychology, and culture. A delectable fantasy.”