Planus

Peter Owen, London, 1972. First edition. Condition: Near fine in very good plus dust jacket. Book has very light bumps at corners. Dust jacket has light edge and corner wear, slight creasing at spine, light soiling on rear cover, price clipped.

Planus is the second book of a remarkable autobiographical series written by Blaise Cendrars to be published in English. Like the first volume in this series, The Astonished Man, it is full of verve, humour and excitement, and it gives some unique glimpses of Cendrars himself.

As one English reviewer once put it, 'The whole world seems to have belonged to Blaise Cendrars', an impression vividly confirmed in these crowded pages. He recounts here his adventures in various parts of Europe: his visit to a brothel in Antwerp, with its hilarious description of the obese prostitute Rij, who would say, 'You can't bungle it with me. I am not shaped like a circumflex accent, a man can ride me astride or side-saddle'; his voyage as a deck-hand on a Greek dinghy smuggling wine into Italy; a great brawl in an Amsterdam restaurant; his meeting in Paris with his literary hero Rémy de Gourmont; together with anecdotes about Picasso, Modigliani and others.

Planus is rich in incident, brilliant in style, disarmingly uninhibited. It will be relished by Cendrars' large circle of English admirers, and should capture still more.