ISBN 0 7206 1210 1
Biography
260pp
Paperback
£11.95
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More about Blaise Cendrars

The Astonished Man

Blaise Cendrars

‘Highly styled, cruel, rude, splendid stuff’ - Sunday Times

The Astonished Man is the extraordinary and much-requested first volume of Blaise Cendrars’ autobiography.

After chronicling the author’s exploits in the Foreign Legion (including the loss of his arm), the narrative sets off across continents. From Africa to South America, Cendrars encounters everyone from Gallic gipsies to Piquita, the Mexican millionairess. And to all his encounters he brings the vitality, savage humour and vivid observation that characterize his dazzling writing.

‘What a writer learns from Cendrars is to follow his nose, to obey life’s commands, to worship no other god but life.’ - Henry Miller

‘That astonishing fireball of an author.’ - Daily Telegraph

‘An extraordinary man who also happened to be an extraordinary writer.’ - Irish Times

‘Exuberant, bizarre, picaresque . . . the only great modern writer to get his arm blown off in the Foreign Legion.’ - Granta

'...most compelling is what Cendrars calls "the demon of writing", which takes the autobiographical as a where not only can we be abruptly transported to another continent without knowing just how we got there but allows a seamless movement between normally segregated modes of writing: from meticulous realistic description and Whitmanesque catalogs to quasi-philosophic or sociological meditations to surrealistic or lyrical passages that at times rise to the rhapsodic. Although Cendrars presents himself as a man of aplomb in the face of all manner of odd situations and characters, the astonishment is manifest in this demonic writing that re-creates or simply creates a sense of life experienced as a perpetual force of mutation, and it is the mutants who have Cendrars's allegiance.' - Contemporary Review

BLAISE CENDRARS was born Frédéric Sauser in 1887 of mixed Swiss–Scottish descent. A legendary adventurer, his life in Moscow, Peking, New York and Paris inspired his brilliant, action-packed narratives. The author of more than twenty books, his works have been translated into eleven languages (including Braille). A founder of the modern movement in literature, he inspired poets from John Dos Passos to Patti Smith. He died in Paris in 1961.