At just fifteen, she immersed herself in Rilke and Gide, and by seventeen, she married her professor: Susan Sontag was an extraordinary woman. Her hunger for life and insatiable curiosity took the young intellectual from California to Chicago, and later to Paris and New York. The early diary entries of the art enthusiast provide unexpected insights into her contradictory personality: the private aspects—her marital crisis, her affairs, and her homosexuality—serve as the backdrop for extensive, profound reflections. Her intimate self-portrait is a testament to a unique intellectual journey and simultaneously a first-rate historical document.