A Sinister Assassin presents translations of Antonin Artaud's largely unknown final work of
1947-48 revealing new insights into his obsessions with the human anatomy sexuality societal
power creativity and ill-will. Artaud's preoccupations are seminally those of the contemporary
world. Those last writings form the most extraordinary element of Artaud's entire prolific body
of work-and is the element now most enduringly inspirational for artists filmmakers
musicians writers choreographers and others inspired by Artaud through their fiercely
exploratory extreme and combative forms. Artaud's last conception of performance of
1947-48-following his Theatre of Cruelty provocations of the 1930s and finally incorporated
into fragmentary writings and drawings as well as into sonic experimentation in screams and
percussion-is that of a dance-propelled act of autopsy generating the 'body without organs'
which negates malevolent microbial epidemics. This book assembles Artaud's crucial writings and
press interviews from September 1947 to March 1948 undertaken at a decrepit pavilion in the
grounds of a convalescence clinic in Ivry-sur-Seine on the southern edge of Paris as well as
in-transit through Paris's streets. Drawing from extensive consultations of Artaud's
manuscripts and from many original interviews with his friends collaborators and doctors of
the 1940s this book brings together translations of all of the many manifestations of Artaud's
final writings: the contents of his last death-interrupted notebook his letters his two
final key texts his glossolalia the magazine issue which collected his last fragments and
the two extraordinary interviews he gave to national newspaper journalists in the final days of
his life in which he denounces and refuses both his work's recent censorship and his imminent
death. Edited translated and with an Introduction by Stephen Barber A Sinister Assassin
illuminates Artaud's last most intensive and terminal work for the first time.
