Schopenhauer is undoubtedly one of the most widely read thinkers of modernity. Aware of his genius from an early age and convinced that life "is a miserable thing", he devoted his time to questioning the meaning of existence and thinking about the best way to avoid suffering. At the age of thirty he set out his metaphysical system in an extraordinary book, The World as Will and Representation, despite which the academic world and the educated public of his time ignored it for decades, while Fichte, Hegel and Schelling became famous. The great work of the pessimistic philosopher took a long time to be recognised, but when it was, at the end of his life, it was an everlasting success. A contemporary of Goethe and Napoleon, Schopenhauer travelled around Europe, felt cosmopolitan from a young age and learned to think from experience. Moreno Claros, with a profound knowledge and understanding of the philosopher's life and work, offers us an instructive and entertaining portrait of the complexities of a thinker who has fascinated authors as diverse as Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Proust, Mann, Zweig, Wittgenstein and Borges.