Anna Kavan

Una nueva era glaciar se extiende por el mundo congelándolo todo a su paso y provocando guerras y migraciones masivas donde aún no ha sumido la vida en su silencio helado. Avanzando a contracorriente de la muchedumbre que huye desesperadamente de la muerte, un hombre busca a la mujer que ama, una joven palida de cabello plateado, para ponerla a salvo. Pero ella, delicada, asustadiza y desconfiada, siempre se escabulle de el, convirtiendo la busqueda en persecucion. Publicada en 1967, Hielo, la misteriosa e inclasificable obra maestra de Anna Kavan, crea un mundo apocaliptico, oscuro, angustioso y alegorico. Mas alla de todas las interpretaciones psicologicas, medioambientales y feministas que se le han atribuido, esta novela es un viaje al mundo devastado y al asedio constante de la depresion y la adiccion a la heroina que la misma autora sufria cuando la escribio.

First published in 1945, the stories collected under the title I Am Lazarus are a brilliant summation of the war experiences of Anna Kavan in Blitz-era London, working among invalided soldiers at a military neurosis centre in Mill Hill. Kavans view of the capital and some of its war victims in this momentous era are typically original and oblique: Lazarus is a patient revived from catatonia who somehow remains institutionalized; the Blitz spirit is coolly stripped of cheeriness and never-say-die in Glorious Boys and Our City; there is a Hithcockian horror story in The Gannets, while in Who Has Desired The Sea and The Blackout the shell-shocked have ultimately only seen war exacerbate old, long-suppressed psychological wounds. Chilling but compassionate classics, the I Am Lazarus collection, republished now after many years, are essential documents of the time - and of Anna Kavan.

The Parson was not published in Anna Kavans lifetime, but found after her death in manuscript form. Thought to have been written between the mid 50s and early 60s, it presages, through its undertones and imagery, some of Kavans last and most enduring fiction (such as Ice). It was published finally, to wide acclaim, by Peter Owen in 1995. The Parson of the title is not a cleric, but an upright young army officer so nicknamed for his apparent prudishness. On leave in his native homeland, he meets a rich and beguiling beauty, the woman of his dreams. The days that the Parson spends with Rejane, riding in and exploring the wild moorland have their own enchantment. But Rejane grows restless in this desolate land; doubtless in love with the Parson, she discourages any intimacy. Until that is, she persuades him to take her to a sinister castle situated on a treacherous headland . . . The Parson is less a tale of unrequited love than exploration of divided selves, momentarily locked in an unequal embrace. Passion is revealed as a play of the senses as well as a destructive force. There have been valid comparisons to Poe, Kafka and Thomas Hardy, but the presence of her trademark themes, cleverly juxtaposed and set in her risktaking prose, mark The Parson as 100% Kavan.

The mother of Anna in this novel dies in childbirth and she brought up by her father and a governess, in a remote Pyrenean village. When she is thirteen, her father shoots himself and she Is adopted by a rich, beautiful and ruthless aunt who stows her in a boarding school. She forms friendships at the school but her freedom is abruptly curtailed when the aunt forces her into a loveless marriage: she comes to detest her husband and bourgeois family but cannot break away and finds herself marooned with him in Burma, where the story climaxes.

'Few novelists match the intensity of her vision' J. G. BallardNo one knows why the ice has come, and no one can stop it. Every day it creeps further across the earth, covering the land in snow and freezing everything in its path. Through this bleached, devastated world, one man pursues the sylph-like, silver-haired girl he loves, as she keeps running - away from her husband; away from the sinister 'warden' who seeks to control her; away from him. 'A raw, brutal tale set in a frozen post-nuclear dystopia ... addictive and extremely entertaining' Guardian'There is nothing else quite like Ice' Doris Lessing'She is De Quincey's heir and Kafka's sister' Brian Aldiss

Peter Owen Publishers are proud to announce the publication of a previously unpublished novel.Set in an unspecified but eerily familiar time and landscape, Guilty is narrated by Mark. He begins the novel as a young boy whose father has just returned from war. In spite of being garlanded as a hero, Marks father declares himself a pacifist and is immediately reviled in a country still suffering from the divisions of war. When his father is forced into exile Mark meets Mr Spector, a shady figure who from then on is a dominant force in Marks life, seeing him through his schooling, employment and even finding him accommodation. When Mark tries to break off with Mr Spector in order to pursue an engagement with the beautiful but docile Carla his life begins to unravel. Thwarted at every turn by a Kafkaesque bureaucracy he begins to fall prey to the machinations and insecurities of his guilt-ridden mind.

The mother of Anna in this novel dies in childbirth and she brought up by her father and a governess, in a remote Pyrenean village. When she is thirteen, her father shoots himself and she Is adopted by a rich, beautiful and ruthless aunt who stows her in a boarding school. She forms friendships at the school but her freedom is abruptly curtailed when the aunt forces her into a loveless marriage: she comes to detest her husband and bourgeois family but cannot break away and finds herself marooned with him in Burma, where the story climaxes.

Marooned in a country house in an ugly manufacturing town is an old vicarage of which expensive improvements have been undertaken. The house sits in the middle of the town where traffic buzz is accentuated by occasional rumbling of passing trams. So much that it is separated by high walls and trees and is encroached by the hustle-and-bustle, it is a lonely ark itself-or at least the occupants intend it to be. Steered by the fathers morbidly morose, withdrawn and sinister nature, the Deanes immerse in a safe, profound secrecy of those in whom no one is interested. Life is meticulously edited to ensure minimal interruption of routine and to discourage any social intrusion of visitors. Fettered by some mental disability and limitation are the young Deanes who rebel and struggle to leave. Their attempts have always been futile that they fear the long, dull ache to follow when they have no choice but to return home. Amidst the staidness of the house is an unpleasant atmosphere that always seems to arise so easily and suddenly. That they rarely converge together constitutes this perpetual sense of warfare because hostilities are liable to burst out between family members. The family reaches a tacit understanding that Beryl, who sets her heart on leaving the house, is held responsible for this hostility that reigns the house. Resolved to break free from all the constraints, she never hesitates to cut to the core the misery of being deprived of freedom. Her ability to assert individuality in defiance of Mrs Deanes disposition, combined with this imponderable vitality, constantly remind her sister Olive of her being a failure. That her life has been a waster plunges her into an interminable distress of which she blames on Beryl, who in return despises her for being mentally dishonest, salving conscience by trying to talk her mother round a more lenient attitude toward Beryl. The grudge that embitters both of them repulses any overture of reconciliation. A young sculptor from London lets in a glimpse of light to Beryls escape. What amazes her more than the job at an exotic hat shop is their increased intimacy made possible by premeditated meals and meetings. That he feels more than an obligatory sense of responsibility for her-the conscious longing, the dread of her absence-touches on his nerve, for the inimical nature of the Deanes has imparted in him a resolution to keep clear of them. In unconscious defense he begins to frame argument against being with her, for he feels his independence being invaded. A Charmed Circle is so well-written and penetrating, with a cold snap of a sterile voice that accentuates the hostile mood. The long narrative prose that pierces into the mind reinforces an atmosphere that under a superficial geniality runs a sinister current of tension and repression. It delves on the motives, the unspoken words that which justify the actions. Kavan meticulously metes out words that capture the passing thoughts that are often overlooked but are key to the actions. Despite the overall air of revolt and struggle for self-expression, the novel asserts a sense of hope of overcoming mental capitulation.

largely autobiographical account of an unhappy childhood, Sleep Has His House startled with its strangeness in 1948. Today it is one of Anna Kavans most acclaimed books. A daring synthesis of memoir and surrealist experimentation, Sleep Has His House charts chronologically the stages of the subjects gradual withdrawal from all interest in and contact with the daylight world of received reality. Brief flashes of daily experience from childhood, adolescence and youth are described in what Kavan terms nighttime language a heightened, decorative prose that frees these events from their gloomy associations. The novel suggests we have all spoken this dialect in childhood and in our dreams, but these thoughts can only be sharpened, or decoded by contemplation in the dark. Anna Kavan maintained that the plot of a book is only the point of departure, beyond which she tries to reveal that side of life which is never seen by the waking eye, but which dreams and drugs can suddenly illuminate. She spent the last ten years of her life literally and metaphorically shutting out the light; the startling discovery of Sleep has His House is how much these nighttime illuminations reveal her joy for the living world.

First published sixty years ago, Asylum Piece today ranks as one of the most extraordinary and terrifying evocations of human madness ever written. This collection of stories, mostly interlinked and largely autobiographical, chart the descent of the narrator from the onset of neurosis to final incarceration at a Swiss clinic. The sense of paranoia, of persecution by a foe or force that is never given a name evokes The Trial by Franz Kafka, the writer with whom Kavan is most often compared, though Kavans deeply personal, restrained and almost foreignaccented style has no true model. The same characters who recur throughout the protagonists unhelpful advisor, the friend/lover who abandons her at the clinic, and an assortment of deluded companions are sketched without a trace of the rage, selfpity or sentiment that have marked more recent prozac memoirs.

Kay, Martin y el australiano bien pudieran formar parte de un triángulo amoroso convencional. Kay abandona el hospital tras una grave crisis para enfrentarse a la ruptura con Martin, su marido, del que sigue prendida. Cuenta para ello con la ayuda del australiano que ha conocido casualmente a la salida de la clinica. Ante el desvalimiento y desequilibrio de Kay para afrontar las consecuencias de esta ruptura, el australiano promete prestar ayuda a la joven: esta le acompañara a California, donde alquilaran una casa junto a la playa hasta que ella se reponga, momento en el que el volvera junto a su esposa e hijos en Nueva Zelanda. Pero tanto el cinismo del ex marido como la ingenuidad del australiano propician el caos. Anna Kavan traza una novela de amor que se transforma en lo contrario, la radiografia de un tormento incruento que lleva a la soledad mas absoluta.

El hielo avanza inexorablemente desde el norte. A través de un paisaje desolado y plagado de peligros, un hombre busca a una muchacha que le rechaza y se escabulle. Su deseo de encontrarla camina parejo al de abandonar el mundo helado y trasladarse a una isla tropical para escribir sobre los lemures cantores. Pero ninguna de estas obsesiones encontrara modo de ser satisfecha. El hombre se convertira en guerrero, en mercenario, en espia, en el hombre de confianza de aquel que retiene a la muchacha que desea rescatar. La persecucion desordenada y angustiosa, es la metafora del desconcierto y el paisaje, un envoltorio en el que recoger un anhelo loco que no se colma.

Tras una primera visita deliciosa Luke regresa a casa de sus amigos y la encuentra sumida en el abandono. Luz y Chas, su marido, parecen tocados irremediablemente por la perdición. Un fatídico mensaje le llega a Luz desde el cielo, mediante un heraldo de fuego mercuriano. Este mensaje se convierte en obsesion porque Luz sabe que significa que su felicidad sera barrida por las sombras. Novela de rara belleza, traducida al español y publicada por primera vez en nuestro pais por El Nadir, es un texto imprescindible para quienes admiren la prosa de Anna Kavan, la densa atmosfera que crea con sus palabras, sus visiones de belleza delirante, y el anhelo de plenitud con el que persigue explicar la naturaleza del amor, porque encontraran en las paginas de Mercury, los emblemas y universo que componen su espacio literario. Mercury es una de sus novelas mas simbolicas y alucinadas.

This collection of fifteen stories from the cult author of Ice examines war and mental illness from her signature surreal point of view. Inspired by Kavans 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, as her cast of outsiders find themselves pulled back into the world despite its hostility.In the title story, a young man living in an asylum must navigate the often unreadable reality around him, taking cues from malevolent flowers and inhumanly brisk nurses, 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 Kafkan bureaucracy to escape a war-ravaged metropolis in Our City, and is distracted from the hopelessness of the task by the beauty of silvery barrage balloons and young women at their windows. Humanity goes to war with nature, too, in The Gannets, a brief, disturbing story that predates Daphne du Mauriers The Birds, featuring a band of impoverished children engaged in a horrific game with unnaturally predatory seabirds.At times cleanly modernist, at others ornately strange and dream-like, Kavans 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.

Esta colección de relatos, mayoritariamente interrelacionados y en gran parte autobiográficos, dibujan el camino descendente de la narradora desde el inicio de la neurosis hasta la prisión final en una clinica suiza. El retrato de la paranoia, de la persecucion por parte de un enemigo o de una fuerza innombrada, recuerdan a El proceso de Kafka, escritor con el que a menudo se ha comparado a Kavan. Su estilo contenido y profundamente personal, sin embargo, aparecen lejos de ningun modelo. Y los personajes recurrentes el inutil asesor de la protagonista, el amigo/amante que la abandona en la clinica o el surtido de engañosos compañeros se nos muestran sin deje alguno de rabia, autocompasion o sentimentalismo.

A strange and compelling classic of dystopian and climate fiction, one that with foreboding and deep compassion maps the psyche and the terrain of dislocation - Jeff VanderMeerOne might become convinced that Kavan had seen the future - New YorkerIce will soon cover the entire globe. As the glacial tide creeps forward, society breaks down. Hurtling through the frozen chaos is a nameless narrator, seeking the white-haired girl he once loved, desperate to rescue her - or perhaps to annihilate her. Through nightmarish, ever-shifting scenes, she flees him and his powerful enemy, the Warden. But none of them can outrun the ice.Anna Kavans masterwork is an apocalyptic vision of environmental devastation and possessive violence, rendered in unforgettable, propulsive, hallucinatory prose.Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.With an introduction by Christopher Priest, author of The Prestige and The Inverted World.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.

An unhappy family returns to Britain from a hot country, filling their suburban house with the glittering hoard they brought back from their exotic sojourn. But the sadness of A, the wife, dulls the shine of their treasure. The house grows quieter, darker. Daughter B learns to hide inside it, in a night-time world whose colours are undimmed by the tense misery of the daytime household. There she sails aquamarine seas on a thistledown boat, ponders the proliferation of dream-tigers, and watches dances and celebrations from the windows of a house whose rooms multiply and change position all the time. As daylight circumstances deteriorate, with her mothers death and Bs departure to boarding school, she becomes determined to take up permanent residence in the house of sleep. But there are night-time institutions determined to control her, and night-time battles to be fought, before she can come home to the dark forever. A kaleidoscopic autobiographical narrative, which speaks the language of childhood dreams which was once known to us all, this is a work of astonishing visual power and devastating loneliness.

Una nueva era glaciar se extiende por el mundo congelándolo todo a su paso y provocando guerras y migraciones masivas donde aún no ha sumido la vida en su silencio helado. Avanzando a contracorriente de la muchedumbre que huye desesperadamente de la muerte, un hombre busca a la mujer que ama, una joven palida de cabello plateado, para ponerla a salvo. Pero ella, delicada, asustadiza y desconfiada, siempre se escabulle de el, convirtiendo la busqueda en persecucion.Publicada en 1967, Hielo, la misteriosa e inclasificable obra maestra de Anna Kavan, crea un mundo apocaliptico, oscuro, angustioso y alegorico. Mas alla de todas las interpretaciones psicologicas, medioambientales y feministas que se le han atribuido, esta novela es un viaje al mundo devastado y al asedio constante de la depresion y la adiccion a la heroina que la misma autora sufria cuando la escribio.