{"product_id":"great-liberty","title":"Great Liberty","description":"A previously untranslated gem of Surrealist prose poetry from the acclaimed French novelist\n\nIn 1941, Julien Gracq, newly released from a German prisoner-of-war camp, wrote a series of prose poems that would come to represent the only properly Surrealist writings in his oeuvre. Surrealism provided Gracq with a means of counteracting his disturbing wartime experiences; his newfound freedom inspired a new freedom of personal expression, and he gave the collection an appropriate title, Great Liberty: “In the occult dictionary of Surrealism, the true name of poetry is liberation.” Gracq the poet rather than the novelist is at work here: Surrealist fireworks lace through bewitching modernist romance, fantasy, black humor and deadpan absurdism. A later, postwar section entitled “The Habitable Earth” presents Gracq as visionary traveler exploring Andes and Flanders and returning to the narrative impulse of his better-known fiction.\nJulien Gracq (1910–2007), born Louis Poirier, is known for such dreamlike novels as The Castle of Argol, A Dark Stranger, The Opposing Shore and Balcony in the Forest. He was close to the Surrealist movement, and André Breton in particular, to whom he devoted a critical study.","brand":"Wakefield Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47072015352152,"sku":"9781939663894","price":18.5,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9781939663894.jpg?v=1778537728","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/great-liberty","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}