Pierre Reverdy's surrealist tale Maison hantée was written in 1928 and first published in 1930. Described by André Breton as among the ten books he would most like to take to a desert island, Haunted House combines the oblique, dreamlike world of Reverdy's poetry with a more ironic, whimsical tone of mock grandeur. John Ashbery's translations, published here for the first time in the UK, extends his life-long engagement with French literature, one that has vitally informed his own work in poetry, literature, and the arts.
