Author bibliography

Blaise Cendrars Books

Last reviewed August 11, 2026Blaise Cendrars’s profile

The short answer

We hold 14 Blaise Cendrars titles on our shelves: 4 novels, 1 story collection, 5 memoirs and travel books, and 4 books of poems. They are listed below by form, earliest first, and every one links to its own page.

Start with Gold, the short 1925 novel that made Cendrars famous, or with The Prose of the Trans-Siberian, the two-meter poem he made with Sonia Delaunay — it takes twenty minutes and is the reason he matters to modern poetry. Moravagine is the wild one. Nothing needs to be read in sequence except the four volumes of the memoir tetralogy, which follow publication order.

Reviewed by our editors against the fourteen Cendrars titles on our shelves: the poems and war writing of the 1910s, four novels, the African folklore anthology, and the four volumes of the late memoir tetralogy. English titles follow the published translations; The African Saga is the American translation of Anthologie nègre, listed under the French original's 1921 date.

Pen-and-ink drawing of the young Blaise Cendrars writing at a café table, coffee and books beside the page, with the lamp posts of Montmartre and the domes of Sacré-Cœur rising behind him.

Blaise Cendrars novels

Gold

Blaise Cendrars · 1925 · Modernist fiction

The rise and ruin of General Sutter, told at telegraph speed — the little novel that made Cendrars famous and Hollywood hungry.

4.2

Moravagine

Blaise Cendrars · 1926 · Modernist fiction

A young psychiatrist frees the world's most dangerous patient and follows him into the abyss — the monster-novel Henry Miller pressed on everyone.

4.5

Dan Yack

Blaise Cendrars · 1927 · Modernist fiction

A jilted millionaire sails three artists to Antarctica to see what silence does to them — then comes back and buys the whaling trade.

4.1

Rum

Blaise Cendrars · 1930 · Modernist fiction

The true case of Jean Galmot — rum fortunes, a Guiana seat in parliament, a prison cell, and a death in Cayenne that started a riot.

4.0

Blaise Cendrars reading a green-bound book in an art-deco library, towers and skyscrapers rising in the mural behind the shelves.

Blaise Cendrars short story collections

The African Saga

Blaise Cendrars · 1921 · Short stories

The compilation that put African storytelling on Paris shelves in 1921 — creation myths, trickster tales, and the source of a Ballets Suédois landmark.

3.9

A collage-style drawing of Blaise Cendrars beside a typewriter, a hand press, loose type, and printed pages fanned around him.

Diaries, memoir, and autofiction

Books written from the author's own life, wherever they were shelved at publication.

I Have Killed

Blaise Cendrars · 1918 · Memoir & autofiction

Four pages that end the war literature of glory: the poet-legionnaire's confession, with drawings by Fernand Léger.

4.1

The Astonished Man

Blaise Cendrars · 1945 · Memoir & autofiction

The memoir tetralogy opens like a lightning strike: war, gypsies, and the art of being astonished — written after a decade of silence.

4.3

The Bloody Hand

Blaise Cendrars · 1946 · Memoir & autofiction

Blaise Cendrars's memoir of the Foreign Legion squad he led in the First World War, written thirty years after he lost his right arm in it.

4.2

Bourlinguer

Blaise Cendrars · 1948 · Memoir & autofiction

Eleven ports and the sea-word for knocking about the world — with the great Genoa chapter, the tetralogy's buried childhood, at its heart.

4.3

Sky

Blaise Cendrars · 1949 · Memoir & autofiction

The tetralogy ascends: a levitating saint, the Brazilian outback — and, unspoken at the center, a son who fell from the sky.

4.2

A grey-haired Blaise Cendrars standing on a harbor quay holding a book, moored ships and dock cranes behind him.

Poetry

Easter in New York

Blaise Cendrars · 1912 · Poetry

The poem where 'Blaise Cendrars' is born: a starving night in Manhattan, addressed to Christ — and modern French poetry changes course.

4.2

The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jeanne of France

Blaise Cendrars · 1913 · Poetry

The two-meter poem: a train across Siberia, a girl asking if they're far from Montmartre, and Sonia Delaunay's colors running the whole way down.

4.4

Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles

Blaise Cendrars · 1918 · Poetry

Seven uncles scattered to the world's ends, one boy reading their letters — the wander-poem John Dos Passos loved enough to translate.

4.0

Nineteen Elastic Poems

Blaise Cendrars · 1919 · Poetry

Poems that stretch to fit the century — nineteen dispatches from the studios of Chagall, Léger, and Delaunay, and the last verse before the novels.

4.0

Blaise Cendrars standing on a station platform beside a steaming locomotive, a bag over his shoulder, a huge red sun hanging low over the tracks.

Blaise Cendrars books in order

Two orders: the one we would hand a new reader, and the order the books were published. Mark what you have read, what you are reading, and what you want to read.

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Start here

One novel, one poem — the two fastest doors in.

Gold(1925)
The rise and ruin of General Johann August Sutter, told at telegraph speed. His first novel, and the book that made him famous.
The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jeanne of France(1913)
The 1913 poem printed as a single two-meter sheet with Sonia Delaunay's colors running the whole way down: a train across Siberia, and a girl asking if they are far from Montmartre.

The poems that invented him

Written between 1912 and 1919, before any of the novels.

Easter in New York(1912)
Written broke and hungry in New York at Easter 1912 — the long prayer-poem that begins the whole career.
Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles(1918)
The 1918 poem of the seven wandering uncles, each lost to a different corner of the world.
Nineteen Elastic Poems(1919)
Nineteen dispatches from the studios of Chagall, Léger, and Delaunay — his last verse before the novels.

The novels

Written in the 1920s, after the poems stopped.

Moravagine(1926)
The demon novel Cendrars claimed wrote itself through him: a doctor frees a homicidal madman and follows him across the world into the Great War.
Dan Yack(1927)
His strangest and most tender novel, published in two halves — Antarctic ice in the first, a dictation machine and grief in the second.
Rum(1930)
The true case of Jean Galmot: rum fortunes in Guiana, a seat in parliament, a prison cell, and a death that started a riot.

The memoir tetralogy, in order

Four panels written after a decade of near-silence, from 1945 to 1949.

The Astonished Man(1945)
L'Homme foudroyé opens the tetralogy like a lightning strike: the Great War's guns, the gypsies, and the art of being astonished.
The Bloody Hand(1946)
The memoir of the Foreign Legion squad he led in the First World War, written thirty years after he lost his right arm in it.
Bourlinguer(1948)
Eleven ports, with the great Genoa chapter — the tetralogy's buried childhood — at its heart.
Sky(1949)
Le Lotissement du ciel closes the series by leaving the ground, chasing Saint Joseph of Cupertino, the friar who flew.

Deeper cuts

The war confession and the anthology.

I Have Killed(1918)
Four pages from 1918, with drawings by Fernand Léger — the poet-legionnaire's confession, and the end of the literature of glory.
The African Saga(1921)
His 1921 anthology of African oral literature — creation myths, trickster cycles, riddles — compiled for French readers and translated into English in 1927.

The novels, ranked

Our order, best first. The reading paths above are for getting started; this is where we would defend each one.

Moravagine(1926)
The one nobody forgets. It kept its possessed quality for a century.
Gold(1925)
The most perfect: one man's ruin at full speed, with nothing wasted.
Dan Yack(1927)
The tender one, and the formal experiment — two halves in two different instruments.
Rum(1930)
Reportage as a novel. The thinnest of the four, and still a story no one else had.

The young Blaise Cendrars at the rail of an ocean liner, coat blowing in the wind, a watercolor sea and gulls behind him.

Common questions

Which Blaise Cendrars book should a new reader start with?

Gold. It is short, fast, and true — the rise and ruin of General Sutter, the Swiss who owned the California land the Gold Rush destroyed — and it made Cendrars famous in 1925. If you want the poetry first, The Prose of the Trans-Siberian takes twenty minutes and is the landmark.

In what order should the memoir tetralogy be read?

Publication order: The Astonished Man (1945), The Bloody Hand (1946), Bourlinguer (1948), Sky (1949). Each volume stands alone — they are panels rather than chapters — but the order they appeared in is the one Cendrars built.

Was Blaise Cendrars French?

Swiss by birth. He was born Frédéric-Louis Sauser in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, wrote in French, and was naturalized French in 1916, after volunteering for the Foreign Legion in the First World War.

Did Blaise Cendrars really lose an arm?

Yes — his right arm, his writing arm, in the First World War, where he served in the French Foreign Legion. He learned to write with his left hand, and the loss runs through the war books: I Have Killed in 1918, and The Bloody Hand, the memoir of his Legion squad, thirty years later.

What is Blaise Cendrars's most famous work?

The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jeanne of France (1913), the two-meter poem made with the painter Sonia Delaunay, is the landmark — one of the founding works of modern poetry. Among the novels, Gold was the great success and Moravagine is the one readers argue about.

Did Blaise Cendrars write The African Saga?

He compiled it rather than wrote it. The African Saga is the English translation of his Anthologie nègre (1921), an anthology of African oral literature — creation myths, fables, and trickster cycles — gathered for French readers. The stories are traditional; the selection and arrangement are his.

An older Blaise Cendrars standing on a Paris street, the Eiffel Tower rising over the rooftops behind him.

Read more about Blaise Cendrars: the full biography covers the life, Paris places, and people connected to the work.

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