Cocteau' s novel Les Enfants Terribles, which was first published in1929,
holds an undisputed place among the classics of modern fiction. Written
in a French style that long defied successful translation-----Cocteau was
always a poet no matter what he was writing--the book came into its own
for English-language readers in 1955 when the present version was com-
pleted by Rosamond Lehmann. It is a masterpiece of the art of translation
of which the Times Literary Supplement said: "It was the rare merit of read-
ing as through it were an English original."Miss Lehmann was able to cap-
ture the essence of Cocteau's strange, necromantic imagination and to
bring fully to life in English the story of a brother and sister, orphaned in
adolescence, who built themselves a private world out of one shared
room and their own unbridled fantasies. What started in games and laughter
became for Paul and Elisabeth a drug to magical to resist. The crime which
finally destroyed them has the inevitability of Greek tragedy.
Illustrated with twenty of Cocteau's own drawings
Cover design adapted from a Cocteau original by David Ford