Loosely based on Loy's real friendship with the German painter Richard Oelze, Insel is the only novel by the inimitable modernist poet and artist Mina Loy, which was never published during her lifetime. It tells the story of an unusual friendship between the narrator (a stand-in for Loy herself) and Insel, a surrealist painter of great talent but terrible living habits. Insel is an unforgettable character: the ultimate charming freeloader who sweeps into the narrator's life and overturns everything.