Best Selling Books by Anais Nin

Anais Nin''s second volume of erotic short stories is broader in scope, encompassing the entire breadth of human sensuality. Each of the 13 stories captures a moment of pure desire, in all its complexity and paradoxical simplicity.

The House of Incest, Anais Nin''s famous prose poem, was first published in Paris in 1936 and immediately drew attention from the era''s prominent writers, including Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell. While written in English, it is considered a landmark work in the French surrealist tradition and one of the most unique books in 20th century literature.

In Delta of Venus Anaïs Nin conjures up a glittering cascade of sexual encounters. Creating her own ''language of the senses'', she explores an area that was previously the domain of male writers and brings to it her own unique perceptions. Her vibrant and impassioned prose evokes the essence of female sexuality in a world where only love has meaning. Her second volume of erotic writings, Little Birds, is also published by Penguin.

A na�ve model slowly discovering her sexuality; an erotic moonlight encounter on a beach; a man teaching the art of passion in a gypsy caravan; and a woman in love with a scent from Fez � Ana�s Nin�s stories explore the nature of sex and the awakening of desire. United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love�s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love�

Sabrina is a firebird blazing through 1950s New York: she is a woman daring to enjoy the sexual licence that men have always known. Wearing extravagant outfits and playing dangerous games of desire, she deliberately avoids committment, gripped by the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake.

La casa dell’incesto è la storia della dolorosa situazione di una donna divisa, incapace di trovare un collegamento tra il corpo e la propria vita emotiva. “Ho scritto le prime due pagine del mio nuovo libro in uno stile surrealista,” annota nel suo diario la Nin nell’aprile del 1932. E in effetti si tratta di un testo audacemente sperimentale, sospeso tra il romanzo e la prosa lirica, che rappresenta il felice punto d’incontro tra i due momenti fondamentali dell’ispirazione di Anaïs Nin: da una parte, la ricerca di una totale e potente naturalezza nell’esprimere la vita e l’emozione dei sensi; dall’altra, il proposito di “procedere dal sogno per entrare nel dato sensibile”, cioè di immergere l’esperienza onirica nel flusso della vita quotidiana, accostandosi alle ricerche del gruppo surrealista. Nasce così quello che è, forse, il libro letterariamente più elaborato e intenso della Nin: un racconto allucinato, “stratosferico”, caratterizzato da una prosa sontuosa e musicale, da una ragnatela sottile ma fortissima di immagini e di suoni, “la mia stagione all’inferno”, come ebbe a definirlo l’autrice stessa. La casa dell’incesto è stato pubblicato da SE nel 1986 e da Feltrinelli nel 1992.

Collages is Anaïs Nin''s last work of fiction, and is, as the title suggests, a collection of interwoven stories, opening and closing with the passage: "Vienna was the city of statues. They were as numerous as the people who walked the streets. They stood on the top of the highest towers, lay down on stone tombs, sat on horseback, kneeled, prayed, fought animals and wars, danced, drank wine and read books made of stone."The central character, Renate, is a sort of "master of ceremonies" for Nin''s modern fairy tales, as she floats through the narrative and communes, in one way or another, with each of the "storytellers." Among them are: Varda, the artist whose interaction with his daughter causes him to spin story upon story in order to win her over to his artistic way of thinking; Henri the chef, who names each of his dishes after celebrities and has stories for the most interesting of them; Nina, a young woman whose spontaneous musings lead casual observers to believe she is insane; Nobuko, the Japanese actress whose charming commentaries and letters are laden with magical yet incorrect English; Bruce, whose betrayals to Renate with boys are written in story form hidden in Chinese puzzle boxes; Count Laudromat, the exiled royal whose father-in-law is an owner of laudromats; the French Consul and his wife, who are writers with extremely different outlooks on love and passion; John Wilkes, the "millionaire patron of the arts" who is actually a gardener; Dr. Mann, an Israeli with the unusual pastime of meeting and kissing famous women authors; and the enigmatic Judith Sands, who may have actually "written" Collages.Collages is Nin''s most light-hearted writing, and, in that sense, is perhaps her most entertaining book. As Henry Miller commented, "The best of collages fall apart with time; these will not."

Anaïs Nin made her reputation through publication of her edited diaries and the carefully constructed persona they presented. It was not until decades later, when the diaries were published in their unexpurgated form, that the world began to learn the full details of Nin''s fascinating life and the emotional and literary high-wire acts she committed both in documenting it and in defying the mores of 1950s America. Trapeze begins where the previous volume, Mirages, left off: when Nin met Rupert Pole, the young man who became not only her lover but later her husband in a bigamous marriage.It marks the start of what Nin came to call her "trapeze life," swinging between her longtime husband, Hugh Guiler, in New York and her lover, Pole, in California, a perilous lifestyle she continued until her death in 1977. Today what Nin did seems impossible, and what she sought perhaps was impossible: to find harmony and completeness within a split existence. It is a story of daring and genius, love and pain, largely unknown until now.

Anais Nin''s first book, published in 1932 by Edward Titus in Paris, was a critical examination of the work of controversial British author D. H. Lawrence. Of all the books written about Lawrence, his widow Frieda said this one "was the best." Nin was inspired to do the book after Lawrence had been villified by puritanical critics, but only had a pile of notes when she mentioned it to Titus. Titus asked to see something quickly, and in 13 days, Nin turned her notes into a cohesive and insightful study. In it, she declared: "Reading Lawrence should be a pursuit of his intuitions to the limit of their possibilities, a penetration of his world through which we are to make a prodigious voyage. It is going to be a prodigious voyage because he surrenders fully to experience, lets it flow through him, and because he had that quality of genius which sucks out of ordinary experience essences strange or unknown to men." Nin''s study remains the most informative and deepest guide to Lawrence today.

Seduction of the Minotaur is an example of Anaïs Nin''s most mature and cohesive fiction. The central character, Lillian, arrives in exotically primitive Mexico from New York, in part to forget her crumbling marriage and to find flow in her life after years of stasis. She befriends Dr. Hernandez, who, like Lillian, is also trying to forget, to escape, which he does with violence, shocking Lillian into facing her inner demon, the "Minotaur."Critic Oliver Evans says of Seduction of the Minotaur: "Its symbolism is the most complicated of any of Miss Nin''s longer works...and at the same time it makes more concessions...to the tradition of the realistic novel: the result is a work of unusual richness."Consider this passage: "It was the time of the year when everyone''s attention was focused on the moon. ''The first terrestrial body to be explored will undoubtedly be the moon.'' Yet how little we know about human beings, thought Lillian. All the telescopes are focused on the distant. No one is willing to turn his vision inward... Such obsession with reaching the moon, because they have failed to reach each other, each a solitary planet!"Seduction of the Minotaur reveals Nin''s struggle for self-awareness through her character Lillian. In a setting that is sumptuously described, with fully developed characters, the plot involves the dichotomy between civilization and the primitive, the dark and bright sides of human nature, with a conclusion that is classic Nin: enlightenment.

This is the final issue of a 15 volume series, and it contains excerpts from Anais Nin''s unpublished diary; previously unknown correspondence by Rupert Pole; essays on Nin, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Gonzalo More, Helba Huara, and Paco Miralles by scholars from around the world; interviews with John Teunissen, Nobuko Albery and Beatrice Commenge; memoirs, including one on Nin by Tristine Rainer; poetry, short fiction, rare photographs and artwork. Included is an index to all contributions to A Café in Space during its 15 year span and notes on this year''s contributors.