Les parents terribles: Pièce en trois actes (The Terrible Parents: A play in three acts)

Jean Cocteau’s play—which translates to “The Terrible Parents”—is a satire about a dysfunctional family with inappropriate romantic entanglements. Because of the plot’s dark humor, the first run of the play faced protest and censorship in the polarized French cultural sphere preceding World War II. Banned and revived multiple times, the work eventually became an international success.
Cocteau inscribed this book to his friends, the artists Marcel Duchamp and Mary Reynolds, who executed the bookbinding. Cocteau accompanied the inscription with a drawing of two overlapping, interconnected faces—one in profile, the other looking straight ahead. This drawing, paired with the cover’s mesmerizing marbled pattern, recalls the fluid dynamics between the play’s characters—or perhaps even between Duchamp and Reynolds, who were artistic collaborators as well as lovers.