The Horse-Headed Forest

A brilliant, deeply researched novel told in compelling mini-chapters, about the key figures of the Surrealist and Negritude movements, by Terese Svoboda (“one of our best writers” —Karen Russell).

In 1941, as war closes in on Europe, the surrealist André Breton, his wife, theartist Jacqueline Lamba, the painter Wifredo Lam and his companion, chemistHelena Holzer, flee Marseille on one of the last boats out of wartime France.Arriving in Martinique, Breton discovers the magazine Tropiques and seeks out its editors Suzanne and Aimé Césaire. The encounter sets off a charged meetingbetween Surrealism and the radical politics of Négritude and exposes tensions that neither movement can easily contain.

Told in tightly controlled, splintered mini-chapters, The Horse-Headed Forest is a novel of calamity and amorous adventure. As the couples move through exile and upheaval, rivalries begin to surface. The result is a vivid, intellectually charged portrait of an extraordinary encounter between artists, lovers, and revolutionaries at a moment of profound historical rupture