A Sinister Assassin

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A Sinister Assassin presents translations of Antonin Artaud’s largely unknown final work from 1947–48, offering fresh insights into his obsessions with human anatomy, sexuality, societal power, creativity, and ill-will. These last writings are a remarkable part of Artaud’s prolific body of work and continue to inspire artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers, and choreographers with their fiercely exploratory and combative nature. Artaud’s conception of performance during this period—following his Theatre of Cruelty provocations of the 1930s—culminates in a dance-driven act of autopsy that generates the ‘body without organs,’ countering malevolent microbial epidemics. This book compiles Artaud’s crucial writings and press interviews from September 1947 to March 1948, conducted in a decrepit pavilion at a convalescence clinic in Ivry-sur-Seine and through the streets of Paris. Drawing from extensive consultations of Artaud’s manuscripts and original interviews with friends, collaborators, and doctors, it brings together translations of his last writings: his final notebook, letters, key texts, glossolalia, a magazine issue collecting his fragments, and two extraordinary interviews where he denounces censorship and confronts his imminent death. Edited and translated by Stephen Barber, this work illuminates Artaud’s last, most intensive and terminal efforts for the first time.