"That anyone could translate Nouvelles Impressions d'Afrique at all is unlikely, but that it could be done with such sparkle and brio seems downright mysterious. This version rescues Roussel's bizarre masterpiece from its status as an intriguing rumor and turns it into a valuable resource for contemporary English-speaking readers. Poets especially will be in Mark Ford's debt."--John Ashbery

"Raymond Roussel's New Impressions of Africa is one of the strangest, densest, maddest, most hauntingly beautiful poems of the twentieth century. In a signal act of scholarship and linguistic finesse, the poet and critic Mark Ford--who also happens to be one of the world's prime Roussel scholars--has carried this extraordinary work across the border from French into English with exemplary skill and care. I should warn you that the book you are holding in your hands is mind-bending."--Nicholas Jenkins, Stanford University

Mark Ford teaches in the English Department at University College London. He is the author of Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams. He has also published two volumes of essays, A Driftwood Altar and Mr and Mrs Stevens and Other Essays. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.