Lust for Life

Book excerpt: “A story of excruciating power.”—The New York Times The classic, bestselling biographical novel of Vincent Van Gogh Since its initial publication in 1934, Irving Stone’s Lust for Life has been a critical success, a multimillion-copy bestseller, and the basis for an Academy Award-winning movie. The most famous of all of Stone’s novels, it is the story of Vincent Van Gogh—brilliant painter, passionate lover, and alleged madman. Here is his tempestuous story: his dramatic life, his fevered loves for both the highest-born women and the lowest prostitutes, and his paintings—for which he was damned before being proclaimed a genius. The novel takes us from his desperate days in a coal mine in southern Belgium to his dazzling years in the south of France, where he knew the most brilliant artists (and the most depraved whores). Finally, it shows us Van Gogh driven mad, tragic, and triumphant at once. No other novel of a great man’s life has so fascinated the American public for generations.