Boy on Fire: The Young Nick Cave

The first volume of the long-awaited, near-mythical biography of Nick Cave, by award-winning writer Mark Mordue.

An intensely beautiful, profound, and poetic biography of the formative years of the dark prince of rock 'n' roll, Boy on Fire is Nick Cave's creation story, a portrait of the artist first as a boy, then as a young man.

A deeply insightful work that charts his family, friends, influences, milieu, and, most of all, his music, the book reveals how Nick Cave shaped himself into the extraordinary artist he would become.

A powerful account of a singular, uncompromising artist, Boy on Fire is also a vivid and evocative rendering of a time and place, from the fast-running dark rivers and ghost gums of country-town Australia to the torn wallpaper, sticky carpet, and manic energy of the nascent punk scene which hit staid 1970s Melbourne like an atom bomb.

Boy on Fire is a stunning biographical achievement.