Thus Spoke Zarathustra stands alone among Nietzsche's published works as a poetic and narrative rendering of his most sophisticated ideas through the medium of Zarathustra's uniquely prophetic voice. It is also the first place where Nietzsche proposes his theory of will to power, and it is the only place in his published works where he elaborates his concept of the superhuman and his doctrine of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche himself regarded this book as his most important philosophical contribution because it proposes solutions to the problems he poses but does not resolve in his other works—for example, his cure for the human disposition to vengefulness and his creation of new values as the antidote to nihilism.

This translation precisely and consistently renders each element so that readers may experience Nietzsche's phrasing, wit, and wordplay in equivalent English. The extensive editorial notes in this edition include numerous cross-references to earlier drafts and variants that are found in his notebooks, and published in Volumes 14 and 15 of The Complete Works, thus allowing the reader to view the evolution of Nietzsche's thought from first drafts to their final published versions. The Translators' Afterword includes a discussion of translation issues unique to Zarathustra, and a glossary of key terms, as well as a discussion of Nietzsche's views concerning this book's contributions to the development of the German language.