M is the name of an enigma. In his short and violent life, Michaelangelo Merisi, from Caravaggio, changed art for ever. In the process, he laid bare his own sexual longing and the brutal realities of his life with shocking frankness. Like no painter before him and few since, M the man appears in his art. As a book about art and life and how they connect, there has never been anything quite like it. A great read; it grabs, it kicks, it lives. Feel the force of Caravaggio's cutting edge - Guardian . Written in a vehemently passionate and colloquial style, M is an abrasive, flawed, idiosyncratic book, but it is full of energy. Peter Robb's Caravaggio may not be entirely believable, but he is thoroughly alive, a being as full of mystery and contradictions as the painter once seemed to his contemporaries - Daily Telegraph .