Description

A collection of fifteen short stories about war and mental illness, from the hallucinatory yet crystalline pen of Anna Kavan

These stories from the cult author of Ice examines war and mental illness from her signature surreal point of view. Inspired by Kavan’s own experiences nursing traumatized Second World War soldiers and as a patient in various asylums, these pieces communicate the claustrophobia and isolation of life amidst conflict or caught in the gears of an institutional machine – but also the stunning beauty of physical experience.

In the title story, a young man living in an asylum must navigate the often unreadable reality around him, as we are left to wonder whether the cure harms more than the disease. Outside the asylum grounds, institutions still exert terrifying power, as an unnamed refugee tries to navigate a Kafkaesque bureaucracy to escape a war-ravaged metropolis in ‘Our City’. Humanity goes to war with nature, too, in ‘The Gannets’, a brief, disturbing story that predates Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Birds’.

At times cleanly modernist, at others ornately strange and dream-like, Kavan’s writing is always propulsive, powered by the tension between the menace closing in around her characters, and the incomparable loveliness of the strange world they inhabit.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Anna Kavan (1901-1968) was born Helen Woods, the only child of wealthy British expatriates, and grew up travelling through Europe and America. She began publishing under her married name, Helen Ferguson, having left her husband in Burma and returned with her son to live in England. After a mental breakdown in the 1930s she began writing under a new name, taken from one of her characters, and with a new style. She continued writing for another three decades, while frequently using heroin and undergoing several rounds of psychiatric hospitalisation. She died shortly after the publication of Ice, her most celebrated work, also available from Pushkin Press.

‘This is Anna Kavan at her best: exacting, sympathetic, powerful.’ Kate Zambreno

‘There is an impressive minimalism at work through much of the collection, an ability to create a destabilising atmosphere without destabilising the text. … ‘Her work, stark with “brilliant light”, offers no false consolation. This is one of its enduring strengths.’ Chris Power, GUARDIAN

‘Now, I can tell you about some women writers who truly are fantastic. One is Anna Kavan. She writes stories like I approach “Land of a Thousand Dances”: she’s caught in a haze and then a light, a little teeny light, come through. It could be a leopard, that light, or it could be a spot of blood. It could be anything. But she hooks onto that and spirals out. And she does it within the accessible rhythms of plot, and that’s really exciting. She’s not hung up with being a woman, she just keeps extending herself, keeps telescoping language and plot.’ PATTI SMITH, PENTHOUSE

Publisher Review

Anna Kavan’s astonishing works are dispatches from a strange and urgent dream * China Mieville * An artist of great distinction * The Times * So well are they written, so clearly and baldly told, and with such narrative power, that you feel you are a doctor caught as in the spell of a mad Ancient Mariner — John Betjeman * Daily Herald * One cannot doubt that what is here is the truth * Tatler * Her prose is beautifully measured, sometimes fey, sometimes muscular. — Christopher Priest * introduction to Ice by Anna Kavan, PP * Now, I can tell you about some women writers who truly are fantastic. One is Anna Kavan. She writes stories like I approach “Land of a Thousand Dances”: she’s caught in a haze and then a light, a little teeny light, come through. It could be a leopard, that light, or it could be a spot of blood. It could be anything. But she hooks onto that and spirals out. And she does it within the accessible rhythms of plot, and that’s really exciting. She’s not hung up with being a woman, she just keeps extending herself, keeps telescoping language and plot. — Patti Smith * 1976 Penthouse interview (https://penthouse.com/legacy/patti-smith/) * There is an impressive minimalism at work through much of the collection, an ability to create a destabilising atmosphere without destabilising the text. …

‘Benjo’ is a masterclass in building tension: realist in detail, but operating more like a ghost story in the way it calibrates mystery and anxiety.

‘Her work, stark with “brilliant light”, offers no false consolation. This is one of its enduring strengths.’ — Chris Power * The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/13/heroin-anna-kavan-short-story-life-fiction) * This is Anna Kavan at her best: exacting, sympathetic, powerful. — Kate Zambreno * Context (https://www.dalkeyarchive.com/2013/09/13/anna-kavan/) *