Written to mark the centenary of Rimbaud's death in 1891, Reed's interpretation covers the crucial period in 1873 when Rimbaud was living out the writing of Une Saison en Enfer. Delirium is a book about what it means to go to the edge and risk everything. It is one poet's reading of another's heroic and subversive credo, by which imaginative truth is seen as the ultimate reality. To his exploration of Rimbaud's drug addiction, homosexuality, and violent liason with Paul Verlaine, Reed brings an enlivened understanding of Rimbaud's desire to shock the world by truth, reinvesting him with the precocity, near-madness, and vision essential to his genius. An imaginative - reconstruction of Rimbaud's life"" - TLS. ""The life of a tortured scamp who made history"" - David Hughes, Time Out. ""Has the merit of conviction"" - The Guardian.