Isidore Isou was a young Jew in wartime Bucharest who barely survived the Romanian Holocaust. He made his way to Paris, where, in 1945, he founded the avant-garde movement Lettrism, described as the missing link between Dada, Surrealism, Situationism, and May ’68. In Speaking East, Andrew Hussey presents a colorful picture of the postwar Left Bank, where Lettrist fists flew in avantgarde punch-ups in Jazz clubs and cafes, and where Isou as sexy and as charismatic as the young Elvis gathered around him a group of hooligan disciples who argued, drank, and had sex with the Parisian intellectual elite. This is a vibrant account of the life and times of a pivotal figure in the history of modern art.