An entertaining and masterly 'group biography' of the leaders of the Surrealist MovementIn the years following the First World War the way we perceive the world was turned upside down by a small group of writers, painters and film-makers: the surrealists. Their aim was to revolutionise the arts, and through them everything else. In 'Surreal Lives' Ruth Brandon follows the growth of the surrealist movement with all the energy, verve and spirit that the subject demands. The story is built around its central characters, enigmatic Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton in all his seriousness, the eager Louis Aragon, and the outrageous Salvador Dali. They are the core of this entertaining and challenging book as their dilemmas, struggles and achievements came to mirror the way the world changed between the wars.In this gripping account, Ruth Brandon uncovers the explosively tense network of relationships on which Surrealism was built; traces the development of its furious ambitions and its uneasy association with the Communist Party; and catches its rich vein of eccentricity. Frances Spalding, Daily TelegraphThis is a wonderful book, full of masterly set-pieces John Banville, Irish Times