Michel Leiris

Seán Hand's book is the first full-length English-language study of Michel Leiris, a French writer widely regarded as a pivotal presence in modern French culture. Leiris worked both as an ethnographer and as a creative writer, a dual career that places him at key crossroads of French cultural history.

Hand traces Leiris's involvement in three major movements of the twentieth century: surrealism in the 1920s, ethnography in the 1930s, and existentialism in the 1940s. Throughout, he situates Leiris's writing within the artistic, political and philosophical ideas of each period.

Hand contends that Leiris's multi-volume autobiography, La Règle du jeu, is the defining model of self-examination in the twentieth century. He also follows Leiris's persistent preoccupation with the idea of 'presence'. Drawing on recent critical theory, the study takes a multidisciplinary approach to this compelling writer.