The fourth volume of “one of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters” (Los Angeles Times). The renowned diarist continues her record of her personal, professional, and artistic life, recounting her experiences in Greenwich Village for several years in the late 1940s, where she defends young writers against the Establishment—and her trip across the country in an old Ford to California and Mexico. “[Nin is] one of the most extraordinary and unconventional writers of [the twentieth] century.” —The New York Times Book Review Edited and with a preface by Gunther Stuhlmann
The acclaimed author details her bohemian life in 1930s Paris—including her famous affair with Henry Miller—in the classic first volume of her diaries. Born in France to Cuban parents, Anais Nin began keeping a diary at the age of eleven and continued the practice for the rest of her life. Confessional, scandalous, and thoroughly absorbing, her diaries became one of the most celebrated literary projects of the twentieth century. Writing candidly of her marriages and affairs—including those with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and author Henry Miller—Nin presents a passionate and detailed record of a modern woman’s journey of self-discovery. Edited and with an introduction by Gunther Stuhlmann, this celebrated first volume begins in the winter of 1931 and ends in the fall of 1934. It covers an auspicious time in Nin’s life, from when she is about to publish her first book to her decision to leave Paris for New York.
Mirages opens at the dawn of World War II, when Anaïs Nin fled Paris, where she lived for fifteen years with her husband, banker Hugh Guiler, and ends in 1947 when she meets the man who would be “the One,” the lover who would satisfy her insatiable hunger for connection. In the middle looms a period Nin describes as “hell,” during which she experiences a kind of erotic madness, a delirium that fuels her search for love. As a child suffering abandonment by her father, Anaïs wrote, “Close your eyes to the ugly things,” and, against a horrifying backdrop of war and death, Nin combats the world’s darkness with her own search for light. Mirages collects, for the first time, the story that was cut from all of Nin’s other published diaries, particularly volumes 3 and 4 of The Diary of Anaïs Nin, which cover the same time period. It is the long-awaited successor to the previous unexpurgated diaries Henry and June, Incest, Fire, and Nearer the Moon. Mirages answers the questions Nin readers have been asking for decades: What led to the demise of Nin’s love affair with Henry Miller? Just how troubled was her marriage to Hugh Guiler? What is the story behind Nin’s “children,” the effeminate young men she seemed to collect at will? Mirages is a deeply personal story of heartbreak, despair, desperation, carnage, and deep mourning, but it is also one of courage, persistence, evolution, and redemption that reaches beyond the personal to the universal.
Nin continues her debate on the use of drugs versus the artist's imagination, portrays many famous people in the arts, and recounts her visits to Sweden, the Brussels World's Fair, Paris, and Venice. "ÝNin ̈ looks at life, love, and art with a blend of gentility and acuity that is rare in contemporary writing" (John Barkham Reviews). Edited and with a Preface by Gunther Stuhlmann; Index.
The renowned diarist continues the story begun in Henry and June and Incest. Drawing from the author’s original, uncensored journals, Fire follows Anaïs Nin’s journey as she attempts to liberate herself sexually, artistically, and emotionally. While referring to her relationships with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and author Henry Miller, as well as a new lover, the Peruvian Gonzalo Moré, she also reveals that her most passionate and enduring affair is with writing itself.
The second volume of “one of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters” (Los Angeles Times). Beginning with the author’s arrival in New York, this diary recounts Anaïs Nin’s work as a psychoanalyst, and is filled with the stories of her analytical patients—as well as her musings over the challenges facing the artist in the modern world. The diary of this remarkably daring and candid woman provides a deeply intimate look inside her mind, as well as a fascinating chapter in her tumultuous life in the latter years of the 1930s.
