Cities of the Interior
Description
This new authoritative edition of Anais Nin's "continuous novel" contains the author's introduction to the collection and each of the five novels therein, character descriptions, publishing history, and an author's chronology. The five novels Anais Nin called her "roman fleuve" are chronologically collected in Cities of the Interior: Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, The Four-Chambered Heart, A Spy in the House of Love, and Seduction of the Minotaur. This new authoritative edition contains and introduction by Anais Nin, character descriptions, publishing history, and an author's chronology. Written primarily in the 1940s and 1950s, these novels were reflections and extensions of what she could not share with the public: her secret diaries, which were filled with the sort of exploits, should her husband have read them, that would have destroyed her marriage. Using spare but powerful prose, Nin reveals a psychological truth about women and relationships that goes beyond the personal and into the universal, providing a "mirror" in which readers can see clearly see aspects of their own selves.
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Person
Anais Nin (1903-1977) was born in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, near Paris, and was the daughter of a renowned pianist and composer, Joaquin Nin. Abandoned by her father in 1913, she and her family traveled to New York, where she began her now famous diary, comprised of some 35,000 pages over a period of six decades. When the first volume of 'The Diary of Anais Nin' was published in 1966, it began Nin's meteoric surge to fame. However, often overlooked are the works of fiction she created, beginning with 'The House of Incest' in 1936, which was followed by a then-banned edition of a collection of novellas under the title 'The Winter of Artifice.' This original edition has been republished for the first time in 2007. Perhaps Nin's most acclaimed fiction is the series of short stories in 'Under a Glass Bell,' which she self-published in New York during the 1940s when no commercial publisher would take the risk. She then began a series of novels that were interconnected and finally collected into one volume entitled 'Cities of the Interior.' Her final novel was 'Collages,' about which Henry Miller said, "Even the finest collages fall apart with time; these will not."
Anais Nin was one of the 20th century's most innovative and compelling artist, and now her works are finally appearing in digital format.
