Ian Penman

Composer, pianist and writer Erik Satie was one of the great figures of Belle Époque Paris. Known for his unvarying image of bowler hat, three-piece suit and umbrella, Satie was a surrealist before Surrealism and a conceptual artist before Conceptual Art. Friend of Cocteau and Debussy, Picabia and Picasso, Satie was always a few steps ahead of his peers at...

Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, mystery - Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman's long-awaited first original book. It offers a kaleidoscopic study of the late West German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982). Written quickly under a self-imposed deadline in the spirit of Fassbinder himself—who often completed films in a matter of weeks...