Professor Michael Hulse is a poet, translator and critic. He has won numerous awards for his poetry and his 2013 collection, Half Life, was chosen as a Book of the Year in the Australian Book Review. He has translated many works from the German, including titles by Goethe, Rilke, and WG Sebald. His translations have been shortlisted for every major translation award, including the PEN Translation Prize (US), the Aristeion Translation Prize and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize (Translator's Association). He teaches poetry and comparative literature at Warwick University. Joanna Kavenna is the author of several works of fiction and non-fiction including The Ice Museum, Inglorious, The Birth of Love and A Field Guide to Reality. Her short stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the LRB, the New Scientist, the Guardian and the New York Times, amongst other publications. In 2008 she won the Orange Prize for New Writing, and in 2013 she was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

"It is often said that poetry is what is lost in translation. Given that Michael Hulse is both a major poet and one of the great translators of German literature, it is not surprising that he has done full justice to Thus Spake Zarathustra. English-speaking readers are indebted to him for a sparkling, transparent, rendering of Nietzsche's poetic philosophical masterpiece."