Stranger Than Kindness

A journey in images and words into the creative world of musician, storyteller, and cultural icon Nick Cave.

One of the world’s most celebrated artists, Nick Cave has enthralled and intrigued fans for more than four decades. With Stranger Than Kindness he reveals his innermost creative process as never before. Vibrant, evocative, and startlingly intimate, this remarkable art book peels back the layers of a unique artist, illuminating the inspiration that drives his work and exploring his many universes, both real and imagined.

Featuring full color reproductions of original artwork, handwritten lyrics, photographs, and collected personal artifacts, Stranger Than Kindness is a music biography that ponders the origins of our deepest influences—what shapes our lives and makes us who we are—and celebrates the curiosity and power of the creative spirit.

This landmark volume is an invitation into his private world, featuring:

• The Creative Process: An unprecedented look into the mind of a master storyteller, revealing the raw materials and inspirations behind his most iconic work.
• Original Artwork: Vibrant, full-color reproductions of paintings, drawings, and sculptures that map Cave’s visual imagination.
• Handwritten Lyrics: See the evolution of his songs through intimate drafts, notes, and revisions scrawled in his own hand.
• Personal Artifacts: A curated collection of objects, photographs, and ephemera that traces a life of intense creativity and ponders what makes us who we are.

Nick Cave, the Australian-born lead singer of The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds and Grinderman, has been performing music for more than 30 years and is recognized as one of the most gifted songwriters and performers of our time. He is the author of And the Ass Saw the Angel, his first novel, and a collection of his lyrics, King Ink. In addition to writing the screenplay and music for the film The Proposition, Cave has composed soundtracks for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and The Road, among others. He lives in Brighton, England.