New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 2004. In this critical biography of Robert Desnos (1900–1945), Katharine Conley reevaluates the surrealist movement through the life and works of one of its founders. "Katharine Conley has now given [Desnos] the critical biography he deserves in English. . . . Conley's great contribution is in tracing the whole of his trajectory, filling the gaps with archival research and her own interviews with surviving friends and witnesses, judiciously separating fact from pious, apocryphal legend. "—Peter Read, The Times Literary Supplement.