Babylon: A Novel

First English Edition. Bright, clean & tight copy, unread, in AS NEW condition. Translated and with an Afterword by Kay Boyle, Illustrated with 19 photograms by Max Ernst, & a Preface by Anna Balakian. "BABYLON, Rene Crevel's most evocative and moving work, is a novel of stylistic elegance and psychological depth that probes the interplay between the rational and the subconscious. Never before published in English, BABYLON is illustrated with nineteen original photograms produced by Max Ernst specifically for the novel. In BABYLON a free-spirited girl watches her father elope with a beautiful English cousin, the chambermaid run off with and then kill the gardener, her grandmother seduce her mother's new fiancé, and her mother finally accept an arranged marriage with the bizarre Mac-Louf, darling of the Society for Protection by Rational Experience. Among these marionettes of society 'the child becoming a woman' pursues her personal dream and seeks a world bathed in an unknown light. BABYLON is a landmark of Surrealist literature, an enduring achievement of one of its leading figures. The noted American writer Kay Boyle has spent years translating the novel and seeing it into print. Her translation sparkles with Crevel's own virtuosity." [jacket copy] "Rene Crevel was born in 1900 and committed suicide in 1935. He was a man who brought an immeasurable sensitivity to the world, to history, to every manifestation of the inner life. Above all he was a born writer to whom the great--from Andre Breton to Ezra Pound to Salvador Dali--paid homage." [Noted under Man Ray author photo on back of jacket] Pristine hardcover w/brilliant corners & crisp edges, a square & tight binding; quite presentable. …