This extensive and wide-ranging selection is taken from three collections of the poetry of one of France's most exciting writers of the twentieth century, the surrealist Robert Desnos. Hailed as the 'prophet' of the Surrealist movement by André Breton, Desnos was a hugely influential figure across all art forms at the time, and yet today his work is completely underrepresented in the English language. The present volume of nearly 300 poems seeks to redress the balance.

Although he died in 1945 in the death-camp of Terezin, Robert Desnos - witty, scabrous, tender, truculent, mysterious, patriotic, childishly playful - survives as the poet par excellence of his age.