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Anais Nin

4.10

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French-born novelist, passionate eroticist, and short story writer who gained international fame with her journals. Spanning the years from 1931 to 1974, they give an account of one woman's voyage of self-discovery. "It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all." (from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. I, 1966)

Anaïs Nin was largely ignored until the 1960s. Today she is regarded as one of the leading female writers of the 20th century and a source of inspiration for women challenging conventionally defined gender roles. 

In addition to her journals and collections of erotica, Nin wrote several novels, which critics frequently associated with surrealism. Her first book of fiction, House of Incest (1936), contains heavily veiled allusions to a brief sexual relationship Nin had with her father in 1933: While visiting her estranged father in France, the then-thirty-year-old Nin had a brief incestuous sexual relationship with him. In 1944, she published a collection of short stories titled Under a Glass Bell, which Edmund Wilson reviewed.

Nin was also the author of several works of non-fiction: Her first publication, written during her years studying psychoanalysis, was D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932), an assessment of the works of D.H. Lawrence. In 1968, she published The Novel of the Future, which elaborated on her approach to writing and the writing process.

Best author’s book

pagesback-cover
4.30

The Diary of Anais Nin

Eric Weinstein
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