First published in Romania in 1972, My Tired Father is an autobiographical collage, an assisted cut-up. In words and diction lifted from old books and popular magazines, Naum demonstrates that desire is a constructive principle and that the spirit of Surrealism is not reducible to a period style of rhetoric. Born in Bucharest in 1915, Gellu Naum was a central figure in Romanian Surrealism before the Second World War. Translated by James Brook, who has translated works by Guy Debord, Benjamin Peret, Henri Michaux, Victor Serge and Sebastian Reichmann.