Salvador Dalí's surrealist masterworks are admired worldwide for their eccentric metaphors. Far lesser known, though, are his fascinating writings, where he occupies himself with verve and in bewilderingly unrefined style with the human body and sexuality.

The French art critic and writer Catherine Millet has studied Dalí's artistic oeuvre and his writings for years. Her essay is the expression of a very personal reading of his self-reflecting texts. This pivotal book explains Dalí's influence on his contemporary artist colleagues and reveals the narcissism, the constraints and the visual inventiveness of the most famous - and the most notorious - of the surrealists.

The text is completed by rarely published photographs and paintings by Dalí and others that illustrate Millet's ideas.