Raymond Roussel

Biography. Translated from the French by Ian Monk. Raymond Roussel (1877-1933)--poet, novelist, musician, playwright, chess enthusiast, neurasthenic, homosexual, drug addict, probable suicide--was an astonishing individual whose life was almost as intriguing as his literary opus. Since his death, Roussel's writings have come to be seen as not only unique, but as a body of work that has aroused enthusiastic appreciation and interpretation from nearly all the major French literary movements that have followed. His works have been championed by the Surrealists, the writers around the Nouveau Roman and the Oulipo, and he is the only author to whom Michel Foucault devoted an entire book. In France, this biography, based upon a huge hoard of Roussel's personal papers discovered in 1989, is acknowledged as the standard work on Roussel's life.