Benjamin Péret was one of the founders of the Surrealist movement in France. Within the group he was the writer they most admired, yet until now little of his work has been translated. This collection is definitive, it contains his novel Death to the Pigs and the Field of Battle, a selection of stories, his own bizarre creation myth Natural History, love poems, political poems, letters from the Spanish civil war, polemical and critical essays, and other, unclassifiable texts such as the Calender of Tolerable Inventions from Around the World. The biographical introduction recounts his political affiliations.

Péret’s works are wildly unrestrained, his imagination is unleashed in every direction at once, “logic is sent back into its kennel,” only humour maintains some sort of order. There is nothing else like it.

Péret’s oeuvre: the most original and savage of our era - Octavio Paz

The greatest living poet - Paul Eluard

Marcel Noll: What is Benjamin Péret?
Raymond Queneau: A menagerie in revolt, a jungle, liberty.

... the poetic principle itself, pared down to its quintessential imaginary nerve - Charles Simic

Benjamin Péret is, for me, the Surrealist poet par excellence: a totally liberating and lucid inspiration which flows effortlessly and directly from its source and straight away re-creates a whole other world. - Luis Bunuel

Humour gushes here as if from its very source - André Breton