A.M. Hammacher, former director of the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands and an authority on twentieth-century art, examines Magritte's interest in language in relation to images and his literary influences, especially his fascination with the themes of Edgar Allan Poe. He describes Magritte's methods of working, and carefully elucidates forty works, reproduced in color, seeking to introduce the reader to the artist's ideas and obsessions without depriving these pictorial riddles and haunting scenes of their mysterious qualities.
