Jean Cassou wrote the thirty-three sonnets which Aragon admired so much and which form the first part of this collection in a Vichy prison between December 1941 and February 1942, in the dark, half a sonnet per night, committed to memory and only written down when a few days before his provisional release he was allowed some books, a pencil and some sheets of paper. Through his fine and thoughtful translation of these sonnets and a selection of Cassou's later poems, Timothy Ades gives us the opportunity of discovering an unfamiliar - and now historical - poetic voice.