Born in New Caledonia in the South Pacific, Francis Carco began his life as a libertine youth in the streets of southern France, and when he moved to Paris in 1910 he began writing, producing Instincts, from which most of the works in this volume are taken. Through these years before the war, Carco became the personification of a true bohemian, engaging in alcoholic jags and abusing his body with ether, opium and cocaine. He counted among his co-conspirators some of the biggest names of the 20th century avant-garde and, through the translations of Gilbert Alter-Gilbert, his work is collected here in Green Integer's notorious series