I CAN THINK of many titles for this sometimes intriguing book – ‘The Sky, the Sea and the Jungle: Asia and the Surrealists’, for example – but I would never have suggested ‘A Surrealist Love Triangle’. That gives the impression that it’s primarily about the unhappy three-way relationship, lasting from 1921 until 1924, of the French poet Paul Eluard, his Russian wife Gala (one of the most dangerous women I have ever read about; she later hooked up with Salvador Dali), and the German painter Max Ernst. One might assume that the book follows their affair from Germany to Paris to Saigon. That would be a terrific story.

Literary Review

Sep 2004

Categories

Jonathan Mirsky

Sweet and Sour

Case Closed?

They Have Been at the Core of Great Events

Tutorials from a Transvestite

Dog Days

What’s Behind the Blue Door?

Communist Poster Boy

Invasive Procedures

Flow Country

A Right Way to Remember?

Girls Allowed

Dig for Victory

Crossing the Yalu

Dining at Lizard’s Thicket

Escape from Entebbe

Wild West

Sage Government

Mission Impossible

One Man and His Lama

A Sorority of Character

Stealing the Crown’s Jewel

Tale From Tiananmen

The Shanghai Beat

Rebel Province

Picture The Revolution