Forget cheery self-help books. In The 33 Strategies of War Robert Greene advocates some hyper-Machiavellian solutions to contemporary problems. He talks to Brian Boyd.

About 2,500 years ago a Chinese general called Sun Tzu wrote a book called The Art of War, which was a military treatise devoted to every aspect of warfare. It is still regarded as one of the definitive warfare tomes.

The book has been credited with influencing Napoleon and even more recently it is believed to have been consulted during the US preparations for the first Iraq war. It is used by European military institutions as an invaluable text book for students and, reportedly, it is required reading for all members of the US marine corps.

It's not all about warfare though. The book also discusses how social strategies can be developed - eg how to develop social relationships and the dark art of how to appear like one is trying to achieve something other than one's actual intention.

This ancient work has also been applied to non-military fields. Because the book is also about outsmarting one's enemy, it is used - in a modified way - as a training guide for people working in competitive industries. Its most contemporary application is in the fraught world of "office politics".

Business managers see it as a necessary text.

The book has also been used in the sports world - an Australian cricket coach handed out excerpts from it to his players before a test against the English cricket team. It even crops up in popular culture: in the film Wall Street, the protagonist, Gordon Gekko, says "Read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Every battle is won before it is fought." In an episode of Star Trek, it was revealed that it was required reading at the Starfleet Academy. In The Sopranos, the main character Tony was told to read it by his therapist.

A new book, The 33 Strategies of War, by the US writer Robert Greene, seeks to act as a modern-day version of this 2,500-year-old book.

Greene writes about the gritty demands of the modern world and unashamedly offers hyper-Machiavellian solutions to contemporary problems. His previous two books, The 48 Laws of Power (1998) and The Art Of Seduction (2001), have both been bestsellers. He is credited with the invention of a new literary sub-genre - that of the "amoral" author.

In The 33 Strategies of War, he looks at the modern workplace as a battleground. The book he says "is a guide for everyone trying to survive and flourish in the modern trenches - it's for the Lord Nelson or Queen Boudicca in all of us".

In his comprehensively researched work he looks back at the great military campaigns in history and applies all the lessons learnt (or mistakes made) to the modern world. It's the "I-Ching" of conflict, if you like.

He looks at how characters as diverse as Napoleon, Margaret Thatcher, Shaka The Zulu and Ulysses S Grant applied their offensive strategies and how "a keen understanding of the rational, resourceful and the intuitive will always defeat the panicked, uncreative and the stupid". He then develops strategies "to help you win life's wars".

"This is not a self-help book," says Greene. "I really dislike those cheery, sunshine books - the ones that always accentuate the positive. They are nowhere near dark or cynical enough for modern life. They're not anchored in anything real. With this book, I spent three whole years researching the history of military battles. This is anchored in history. If anything, this is an anti-self-help book."

Greene, who has a degree in classical studies and has variously worked in Hollywood as a story developer and as a magazine editor, sees the book as finishing off the trilogy that also includes his previous books on power and seduction. "I'm really thrilled by the comparisons this book is getting with Sun Tzu's famous book. You have to remember how old The Art of War is - a lot of it is about abstracts and an alien culture. I took a scholarly approach to reading it - I had the concepts and ideas translated for me.

"Obviously the works of Machiavelli and Nietzsche were a big influence on me. What I'm doing is trying to find the connections between great military battles and the worlds of office politics, business and politics. As Churchill once said: politics is a lot bloodier than warfare."

He's not fazed at all by being called an "amoral" writer. "I think Machiavelli got there before me," he says. "I expected a far more negative reaction to the books and thought they would spark more of a controversy simply because they are so dark and cynical - although I would prefer the term 'realistic'. When the book about the art of seduction came out, there was an article in a woman's magazine in the US which basically said the book was satanic and Hitler-like in its conclusions. As a result, I sold a lot of books on the back of that review."

Some of Greene's 33 strategies of war include such stark advice as: sow uncertainty and panic; dominate while seeming to submit; expose and attack your opponent's soft flank; hit them where it hurts; avoid the snares of groupthink and, my favourite, destroy and crush your enemy.

"What I'm trying to do is to open people's eyes about how the worlds of the office, business and politics work," he says. "I'm saying that this is what people are really like out there and you have to apply military-style strategies in your dealings with them. Those most helped by the books are the powerless, because suddenly they see how people in power are con artists and that people in power continually deceive people.

"There is some literary exaggeration in how I write. But I have to present reality as baldly as possible. Do I worry that people might use these strategies for the wrong purposes? I don't encourage or discourage anything. With the book about seduction I was a bit unhappy about some anecdotal evidence from people - as in they may have used what I said in the book to be nasty to someone - that makes me very unhappy."

Greene certainly delights in being the negative antidote to the rash of daft self-help books out there.

"There's so much correctness out there now, I just had to go in the other direction and maybe at times I go a bit too far," he says. "I like being called amoral. However, having done three so-called 'amoral' books now, I'm thinking about making the next one un-amoral".

The 33 Strategies of War, by Robert Greene is published by Profile Books tomorrow, £20