Maurice Sandoz; illustrated by Salvador Dali.
 
Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1945. Quarto. Green cloth in an incomplete dust wrapper, now protected by a mylar cover. Including 24 plates by Dali. 128 pages. First American edition, lengthy inscription by Sandoz in French on the flyleaf. Near fine in a good dust wrapper. 
 
Sandoz, by turns a composer, chemist, and writer of fantastic memoirs, tells of his encounter with a mummified lady; of Uncle Celestin, his crutches and a spirit world manifestation; of the Orient, and the Indies, and a stolen sapphire; of wolves in the Turkish cemetery of Scutari; of a modern saint and the materialization of rose petals; of death in Davos. The Dali linocuts are an ideal pairing. Sandoz met Dali in Rome in the late thirties.
 
"When a writer wishes to plunge his readers, if he has any, into an atmosphere inducive of fear and charged with mystery, he takes care to place the characters of his story on a proper stage. He conjures up at will a lonely country house, or, what is even more nerve-racking and much more distinguished, an exaggeratedly medieval historical castle. Then, having thus provided for the first necessities, he unlooses the elements. His lightnings herald the crash of thunder, the rain beats against the windows, squalls of wind unexpectedly burst open the stoutest doors, and the sound of the sad sea waves, artfully compared to the cries of the wounded on the battlefield, complete the picture."