reading Nietzsche for the first time... while its not that her insights are shockingly new, its more that they seem shockingly not new at all, that she is alas bringing out the "real" Nietzschean insights that you maybe felt but never articulated. This book also makes nice use and comparison of the works of Weber, Lacan and Badiou among others, but in much more enlightening ways than a lot of other recent scholarship. And its readable without having a PhD background in the stuff. Alenka Zupancic is a researcher at the Institute Of Philosophy in Ljubjana: Zizek's old stomping grounds, and there are some similarities in her work with his, particularly with her anti-postmodern Lacanianism. However, though her writing is less flashy than Zizek, her thinking is just as exhilarating. It's tough these days to approach Nietzsche's work freshly. He has been mined as much as any philosophical figure in recent memory. There doesn't seem much ore left in those shafts. but this book finds some valuable nuggets. "The Shortest Shadow" attempts to reconsider two aspesct of Nietzche's thought The Death of God and the idea of "noon" (the time when shadows are shortest). Zupancic is an excellent reader and gives us much to consider. She stays close to her texts; and though she can be a bit difficult at times, she neither loses her focus nor ceases to be provocative. It is a book that in many ways (though is scope is much more narrow) that is almost as