Nick Cave: Mercy on Me

Musician, novelist, poet, actor: Nick Cave is a Renaissance man. His wide-ranging artistic output - always uncompromising, hypnotic and intense - is defined by an extraordinary gift for storytelling.

In Nick Cave: Mercy on Me, Reinhard Kleist employs a cast of characters drawn from Cave's music and writing to tell the story of a formidable artist and influencer. Kleist paints an expressive and enthralling portrait of Cave's childhood in Australia; his early years fronting The Birthday Party; the sublime highs of his success with The Bad Seeds; and the crippling lows of his battle with heroin.

Capturing everything from Cave's frenzied performances in Berlin to the tender moments he spent with love and muse Anita Lane, Reinhard Kleist's graphic biography, like Cave's songs, is by turns electrifying, sentimental, morbid and comic - but always engrossing.

Anarchic, blackly comedic, brooding and strange, the works of Australian wordsmith and musician Nick Cave have a seam of Gothic running through their centre. Whether in verse, fiction, stage, screen or in music, Cave is a consummate storyteller. As an author he is best known for novels including, The Death of Bunny Munro and And the Ass Saw the Angel as well as the epic travelogue in verse The Sick Bag Song and his songwriting collected in The Complete Lyrics.