Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a philosophical text by Friedrich Nietzsche told as a series of parables and declarations by the traveling prophet Zarathustra. The treatise was published in four parts from 1883 to 1885 and concerns Nietzche's concept of the ubermensch, or overman, a superior being that man must become through self-overcoming and by expressing his inner will to power. Like many of Nietzsche's works, Thus Spoke Zarathustra contains harsh critiques of Christian morality, declaring famously that "God is dead."