When Christopher Tiffen discovers a painting by little-known Antipodean surrealist Robert J. Wake in the Sydney Art Gallery one summer, he is smitten by both the mysterious artist and the woman by his side viewing the painting Agnes Alert of Barcelona. Tiffen is struggling with his research and Robert J. Wake offers him a rich seam. So begins the intriguing search from Sydney to London and Wake’s early days as a surrealist painter; to France and to Barcelona where he disappears in 1937, and beyond. Both mesmerising and gently comic, The Phantom Surrealist masterfully captures the ways in which surrealism shook up the staid Australian art world and captured a generation of young radicals. It is a literary novel that seamlessly crosses genres, combining elements of mystery fiction and a love story.
