This study, first published in 1998, makes a lively and welcome contribution to the critical analysis of Nietzsche¿s seminal classic This Spoke Zarathustra . Through a close textual reading of the neglected and ill-understood part four of the text, the author seeks to show that Nietzsche¿s project of self-overcoming is a failure. Offering herself as a philosopher-priestess of the wisdom of pessimism, Francesca Cauchi invokes a complex of responses in the reader, providing a necessary challenge to any and all advocates of life.