Surrealism and The Feminine Element - Nadja by Andre Breton - Book Report/Review Example

The book “Nadja” centres on the encounter of the author with a girl he meets in Paris and eventually grows a relationship with her. The story is foreboded by the presence of an obsession that haunts the life of the author. The book reaches its epitome of surreal effect when one actually browses through the book (Levitt, A. S., “The Genres and Genders of Surrealism”). The touching first-person description is accompanied by forty-four photographs which form a very comprehensive part of the book.

These photographs include the pictures of ‘surreal’ people, places and objects which are either visited by the author or these are haunted by the consistent presence of Nadja which eventually influence and inspire the author to put his focus on the reality check of those people, places or objects. The book can be treated as the testimony which tries to find out the presence or the lack of reality in the presence of these people, places or objects (Hubert, R. R., “Surrealism and the Book”).

The book, “Nadja” at the first reading might appear to be an obsessed romantic story. But a bit of insightful reading would definitely open up a different paradigm for the book. The more illustrated picture of the city of Paris almost takes the book to a dash of magic realism and makes it all the more fascinating and interesting to read. The book is definitely food for thought kind of an item and can be explored at myriad levels both from the aesthetic and psychoanalytical point of view.