This definitive biography, by the world authority on Antonin Artaud, is the first ever to have been written about this legendary figure of 20th century culture. Spanning Artaud’s involvement with the Surrealist movement in 1920s Paris, his seminal Theatre of Cruelty in the 1930s, and his nine-year asylum incarceration and final period of drug-ravaged freedom in the 1940s, Blows And Bombs gives a vivid and potent portrait of Artaud’s extreme life.

Artaud’s influence has been colossal, extending from the Beat movement to punk, from the revolutionary theatre movements of the 1960s to contemporary digital media. For the first time, this biography gives readers the opportunity to trace the entire development of his inspirational work. Many parts of Artaud’s life have been unknown – such as his journey to Ireland, from which he returned in a straitjacket – and Barber finally illuminates those mysteries. Artaud’s wild life was full of conflict, desperation and drama, and Blows And Bombs presents that multi-faceted existence in all of its fascinating layers.

Based on fifteen years of research and on interviews with the people closest to Artaud, this is a unique and compelling biography that will be read for decades to come.

Stephen Barber is a noted cultural historian and the leading authority on Antonin Artaud. He is the author of many acclaimed books, including: Burning World, the best-selling biography of Edmund White; Tokyo Vertigo; Caligula: Divine Carnage; and Artaud: The Screaming Body. Blows And Bombs was first published by Faber & Faber in 1993, and is presented here in a new, updated and expanded edition.

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