The Surrealists, the generation of the Great War, cherished the crazy dream of "changing lives" and transforming everything around them. And even though they did not quite achieve their goal, their work and their experience had a huge impact on the culture of the 20th century. Pierre Dex recreates the heroic period of the surrealist movement: the delight of the discoverers Rimbaud and Lautreamon, the provocations of the Dadaists, the exploration of the boundaries of the intelligent. Emphasizing the role of women in the life of surrealists and conveying the complexity of the relations of representatives of this trend in art with the Communist Party, he brings to the surface the hidden causes and secret motives of conflicts and crises that shook the group from its founding in 1917 until 1932 - the year of the final gap between its two founders, Andre Breton and Louis Aragon.