Noa Noa: Gauguin’s Tahiti

160pp, copiously illustrated in full colour and black and white. In deep blue cloth-covered boards with gilt titles on spine. Small 4to. Cloth just a little bruised at spine ends. Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. In its original dust jacket very lightly bumped along upper edge and around base of spine. Gauguin’s original manuscript, the first annotated English edition. Noa Noa was Gauguin’s most ambitious written work, originally planned as a collaboration with the poet Charles Morice; its first publication was a disaster. In this version it is presented with all the abrupt vigour and freshness of the artist’s original intent. More than a description of Gauguin’s sojourn in Tahiti in the late 19th century, it is a vibrant tapestry in which fact, fiction, myth and dream are interwoven.