Planus

Blaise Cendrars

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY NINA ROOTES

First British Commonwealth edition, 1972, Jacket design by Keith Cunningham

The dust jacket has three barely visible stains on the front as well as some evidence of yellowing on the back. The book, nonetheless, is in very good condition, with no scratches or markings, neither on its cover nor among its pages.

Planus is the second book of a remarkable autobiographical series written by Blaise Cendrars to be published in English. Like the first volume in this series, The Astonished Man, it is full of verve, humour and excitement, and it gives some unique glimpses of Cendrars himself.

As one English reviewer once put it, 'The whole world seems to have belonged to Blaise Cendrars', an impression vividly confirmed in these crowded pages. He recounts here his adventures in various parts of Europe: his visit to a brothel in Antwerp, with its hilarious description of the obese prostitute Rij, who would say, 'You can't bungle it with me. I am not shaped like a circumflex accent, a man can ride me astride or side-saddle'; his voyage as a deck-hand on a Greek dinghy smuggling wine into Italy; a great brawl in an Amsterdam restaurant; his meeting in Paris with his literary hero Rémy de Gourmont; together with anecdotes about Picasso, Modigliani and others.

Planus is rich in incident, brilliant in style, disarmingly uninhibited. It will be relished by Cendrars' large circle of English admirers, and should capture still more.