Jonathan Mirsky

Angkor Where?

Ghost Ships: A Surrealist Love Triangle

By

Yale University Press 256pp £25 order from our bookshop

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.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • A treat from the LR Archive: exactly 20 years ago, Malcolm Bradbury reviewed John Updike's 'Bech at Bay' ,
    • ‘When bullets come close, the noise they make as they go past changes from a zing to a crack’ John Lanchester's dy… ,
    • Man with a Bloody Paintbrush: Robin Simon on Lucian Freud ,
    • Jane Ridley reviews The Diaries of Kenneth Rose (ed. D R Thorpe) ,
    • ‘Look,’ says Trump. ‘The fact is I’m only human.’ On the evidence of this book that point is debatable. From the A… ,
    • From our December/January issue - here's John Banville's review of Colm Tóibín on the fathers of Wilde, Yeats and J… ,
    • Hi , we would love to review 'Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar' in our next issue! Please could you get in… ,
    Follow Us