The Songs of Maldoror written and published between 1868 and 1869 by Le Comte de Lautréamont – the nom de plume of the Uruguayan-born French writer Isidore Lucien Ducasse – is a dazzlingly macabre novel consisting of six superlative cantos. Overflowing with lucid poetic imagery and saturated with sublime malevolence, it channels the ominous dynamism of the most exquisite nightmares and perfidious fantasies. A jewel in the crown of literary cruelty, this visionary masterpiece of prose-poetry was rediscovered by the Surrealists in the early 20th century, an arcane text emerging from obscurity to be hailed as a dark progenitor of their movement.

‘Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror [is] the black bible… almost the basic dream
text of surrealism.’ J.G. Ballard

‘The Songs of Maldoror is an enigma of redoubtable power.’ Jacques Derrida

‘The Songs of Maldoror is the expression of a revelation so complete it seems to
exceed human potential.’ André Breton

Translated into modern English by R J Dent

Illustrated by Karolina Urbaniak
With essays by Audrey Szasz and Jeremy Reed