Vincent van Gogh created some of the best loved – and most expensive – works of art ever made, from the early The Potato Eaters to his late masterpieces Sunflowers and The Starry Night. He had worked as an art dealer, a missionary and as a teacher in England, and only in his late twenties did he begin a life that would be fundamental in shaping modern art. But when he died in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890 at the age of thirty-seven he was largely unknown.

Written with the cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum, Pulitzer-winning authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith recreate his extraordinary life, and the inside of his troubled mind, like never before – and they put forward an explosive new theory challenging the widespread belief that Van Gogh took his own life. Drawing for the first time on all of his (and his family's) extensive letters, which offer exquisite glimpses into his thoughts and feelings, this is the definitive portrait of one of the world's cultural giants.