Satisfied Sarcophagi

“Powerful, transgressive, and obscene, Mansour’s stories spin an elaborate dance between death and sex, disemboweling the patriarchy (and every other authority figure) in the process. These stories, though written decades ago, are still beautifully unsettling today. This is the path surrealist prose could have taken, if it hadn’t balked.“—Brian Evenson, author of Last Days

“Vividly translated by C. Francis Fischer, Joyce Mansour’s prose is erotic, funny, scary, intensive, and grotesque, sometimes all at once. It follows the inclinations of a mind operating in utter inventiveness. Every sentence is unpredictable, every image startling. This must be why there has been such an explosion of interest in her work—as in the work of fellow woman surrealist Leonora Carrington. In extreme times, we need extreme measures, convulsive beauty.“—Johannes Göransson, author of The New Quarantine

“The new English translation published by City Lights Books of one of her idiosyncratic masterpieces, Satisfied Sarcophagi, once again rightfully draws our rapt attention not only to the often quieter and less recognized place of women amongst the surrealist canon, but also to the writer who I place at the apex of that pantheon… . the quintessential literary provocateur and the most daring of all surrealist authors: Joyce Mansour.“—Donald Brackett, Critics At Large

“Only recently did English find out that Joyce Mansour was one of the 20th century’s most uncanny and transformative poets, and now comes the revelation that she was also quite the raconteur. Her narrations feel both enigmatic and fated—each word, each image, lashed to the next by libidinous and mortal sinew. C. Francis Fisher’s translation is limpid and fragrant, like a vapor rising over a cauldron of boiling blood. I suspect this collection will soon be recognized as a classic of Modernist fiction—in the Surrealist tradition and beyond. May it be read widely.“—Kit Schluter, author of Cartoons

Joyce Mansour was born in England in 1928 to a Jewish family of Syrian descent who moved to Egypt when she was still an infant. She grew up among the English-speaking elite of Egypt. Despite her privileged childhood, she was deeply scarred by the loss of her mother to cancer at 15 years old and the death of her first husband six months into their marriage, when she was just 18. She learned to speak and write in French when she married her second husband, a Francophone Egyptian, and was exiled to Paris when Nasser came to power. Mansour was part of the inner circle of Surrealists, a close friend of Andre Breton and the most significant poet to join the group after World War II. She wrote 16 books of poetry, as well as prose works and plays. She lived in Paris, France until her death in 1986 at age of 58.

C. Francis Fisher appeared with World Poetry Books in 2024. She has been supported by fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. She lives in Queens, New York.

Garrett Caples by Joyce Mansour (2023). He lives in San Francisco, CA.

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