Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961) was the pseudonym of Frederic Sauser,
the Swiss son of a French Anabaptist father and a Scottish mother.
As a young man he traveled widely, from St. Petersburg to New York
and beyond, and these wanderings proved the inspiration of much of
his later poetry and prose. Settled in Paris in 1912, Cendrars
published two long poems, "Easter in New York" and "The
Transsiberian," which made him a major figure in the poetic
avant-garde. At the outset of World War I, he enlisted in the
French Foreign Legion, losing an arm in the battle of the Marnes. A
prolific poet, Cendrars was also an exceptional novelist, the
author of Moravagine, Gold, Rhum, and The Confessions of Dan Yack,
among many other books.
Paul La Farge is the author of two novels- The Artist of the
Missing, and Haussmann, or the Distinction, which was a New York
Times Notable Book for 2001. His third book, The Facts of Winter,
was in January 2005.
"Rip-roaring fiction and imaginative adventuring on all planes of
experience."
— Times Literary Supplement
"Moravagine seeks damnation and extinction with a glee unequaled in
literature. The only parallels that come to mind are Céline and
Beckett."
— Sven Birkerts, New Boston Review
"An unbridled picaresque fantasy…full of tenderness, horror, and
ink-black jokes of a visual intensity that recall Goya."
— Financial Times
"Savage, funny, wildly inventive."
— John Lehmann, Sunday Telegraph
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