In the history of cinema, this novel's protagonist and subject ranks as a founding father, not least for his legendary horror film, Nosferatu. But here he is revealed as a hermetic genius who turns, tragically, against himself, becoming in a sense his own vampire.

What shadows Shepard's Murnau - through the airfields of the Great War to cafes and clubs in Berlin in the twenties, and to the virtual invention of filmmaking - is the conflict between his impossibly high ideals and the heartbreaking memories of love betrayed and the lover who died in the trenches. From provincial Germany, briefly through Hollywood in its early days, to the South Seas, Nosferatu charts a life at once artistic, intellectual, and deeply human.