Artist Tom de Freston has long had an obsession with G�ricault’s painting ‘The Raft of the Medusa,’ and the troubling story behind its creation. The monumental canvas, which hangs in the Louvre, depicts a 19th century tragedy in which 150 people were drowned at sea on a raft lost in a stormy sea, when the ship Medusa was wrecked on shallow ground. When de Freston began making an artwork with Ali, a Syrian writer blinded by a bombing, ‘The Raft’s’ depiction of pain and suffering resonated powerfully with him, as did G�ricault’s awful life story. It spoke not only to Ali’s story but to Tom’s family history of trauma and anguish, offering him a passage out of the dark waters in which he found himself. In spellbinding, visceral prose, de Freston opens a window onto the magnetic frisson that runs between a past masterpiece and contemporary artistic endeavours.

Author Freston, Tom De Published by Granta Books ISBN 9781783786633 EAN 9781783786633 Bic Code Cover Hardback