The Skin of Dreams - Paperback

Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) was born in the French town of Le Havre and educated at the Sorbonne. An early association with the Surrealists ended in 1929, and after completing a scholarly study of literary madmen of the nineteenth century for which he was unable to find a publisher, Queneau turned to fiction, writing his first novel. Influenced by James Joyce and Lewis Carroll, Queneau sought to reinvigorate French literature, grown feeble through formalism, with a strong dose of language as really spoken. Queneau's books, which typically blur the boundaries between fiction, poetry, and the essay, include Witch Grass and We Always Treat Women Too Well, both available as NYRB Classics.

Chris Clarke is a literary translator and scholar. He currently teaches in the Translation Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. His translations from French and Spanish include books by Raymond Queneau, Pierre Mac Orlan, Éric Chevillard, and Julio Cortázar, among others. He was awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for fiction in 2019 for his translation of Marcel Schwob's Imaginary Lives, a prize for which he was also a finalist in 2017 for his translation of Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano's In the Café of Lost Youth, published by NYRB Classics.

Paul Fournel is a writer, publisher, and diplomat. He wrote his master's thesis on Raymond Queneau and has published a book-length study of the Oulipo, of which he is a member.