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Nadja by André Breton
£15.99
Available
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9781681379364
Published:
17 Jun 2025
Format:
Paperback
Number of pages:
160 pages
Dimensions:
203x127mm
Weight:
0.367kgs
Author:
A new translation of one of the defining works of the French surrealist movement, an energetic autobiographical novel that is at once both a tumultuous romance story and an initiation into the surrealism of everyday life.
A new translation of one of the defining works of the French surrealist movement, an energetic autobiographical novel that is at once both a tumultuous romance story and an initiation into the surrealism of everyday life.
The most renowned of all surrealist literary works, André Breton's Nadja has been stirring passions and imaginations since its first publication in 1928. At once a poignant romance, an autobiography, a philosophical inquiry into questions of identity, and a lively illustration of the surrealist belief in life-changing chance, Nadja relates the fortuitous meeting and brief, tumultuous relationship between Breton, surrealism's founder and primary theorist, and the "wandering soul" who called herself Nadja, "because in Russian it's the beginning of the word for hope, and because it's only the beginning."
Over the course of a single breathless week, recounted with scrupulous precision and a poet's sense of drama, Breton and Nadja pursue an adventure that stands outside of societal or moral conventions, and that brings both of them to what Breton termed "the extreme limit of the surrealist aspiration." Bookending this beguiling and ultimately tragic story are a series of "petrifying coincidences," episodes that initiate the reader into the surrealism of everyday life, and a penetrating examination of Breton's own share of responsibility in Nadja's ultimate fate, ending with the shattering intrusion into the author's life of a final transformative occurrence.
In this, the first new translation of Nadja in more than sixty years, award-winning translator and surrealism scholar Mark Polizzotti brings a fresh perspective to this unique and haunting tale. Making use of the most recent research (including the revelation of Nadja's identity and life story and the discovery of Breton's original manuscript), he sets the narrative in its historical and biographical context and corrects a number of inaccuracies in the previous English version.
This vibrant, emotionally resonant translation breathes new energy and urgency into a book that has long been recognized as one of the seminal masterpieces of twentieth-century modernism.
About the Author: André Breton (1896-1966) worked as an assistant to Marcel Proust, and in 1919, along with Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon, he founded the journal Littérature. In 1924, Breton issued the Surrealist Manifesto. A Marxist, an atheist, and always a surrealist, Breton was a prolific author and a pugnacious controversialist whose works include the collection of poems Claire de terre and The Magnetic Fields, the first book of automatic writing, cowritten with Philippe Soupault and reissued by NYRB Poets in 2020. Mark Polizzotti has translated more than fifty books from the French, including Arthur Rimbaud's The Drunken Boat for NYRB Poets and Jean Echenoz's Command Performance for NYRB Classics. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and the author of eleven books, including Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, Highway 61 Revisited, and Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto. He lives in New York.
| Number of pages | 160 |
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| First Item | 2 Items & Over | |
|---|---|---|
| UK | £3.75 | £5.00 |
| EU | £15.00 | £30.00 |
| USA & Canada | £30.00 | £50.00 |
| Rest of the World | £45.00 | £60.00 |
| Collect in Store | free | free |
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