An imaginative novel recreating the life of Isidore Ducasse, the self-styled Comte de Lautreamont who he died under mysterious circumstances in 1871. He left almost no clues to his existence, except the explosive, astonishing prose poem, Les Chants de Maldoror, precursor to the works of the Surrealists. Reed evokes a fictional life of the notorious Comte extraordinary for its concentration of poetic power and for its excursions into the psychological hells of the underworld. In identifying himself with Lautreamont, he succeeds in an uncanny impersonation of the style of that morbid youth, obsessed with decay."" - The Times. ""Written in a lush, elegant prose...a satisfying work of biography."" - Bloomsbury Review.