Under a Glass Bell

by Anaïs Nin, Gunther Stuhlman (Foreword by)

Under a Glass Bell is one of Nin's finest collections of stories. First published in 1944, it attracted the attention of Edmond Wilson, who reviewed the collection in The New Yorker. It was in these stories that Nin's artistic and emotional vision took shape. This edition includes a highly informative and insightful foreword by Gunther Stuhlmann that places the collection in its historical context as well as illuminates the sequence of events and persons recorded in the diary that served as its inspiration.
Although Under a Glass Bell is now considered one of Anaïs Nin’s finest collections of stories, it was initially deemed unpublishable. Refusing to give up on her vision, in 1944 Nin founded her own press and brought out the first edition, illustrated with striking black-and-white engravings by her husband, Hugh Guiler. Shortly thereafter, it caught the attention of literary critic Edmund Wilson, who reviewed the collection in the New Yorker. The first printing sold out in three weeks.

This new Swallow Press edition includes an introduction by noted modernist scholar Elizabeth Podnieks, as well as editor Gunther Stuhlmann’s erudite but controversial foreword to the 1995 edition. Together, they place the collection in its historical context and sort out the individuals and events recorded in the diary that served as its inspiration. The new Swallow Press edition also restores the thirteen stories to the order Nin specified for the first commercial edition in 1948.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Erotica, 20th Century, French Literature, Literary Fiction

101 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Writer and diarist, born in Paris to a Catalan father and a Danish mother, Anaïs Nin spent many of her early years with Cuban relatives. Later a naturalized American citizen, she lived and worked in Paris, New York and Los Angeles. Author of avant-garde novels in the French surrealistic style and collections of erotica, she is best known for her life and times in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volumes I-VII (1966-1980).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana%C3%...

Reviews

[Georgia Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A glass bell. As in a bell jar? My first thought was of Sylvia Plath. Sometimes, first impressions are right. Though let me begin with what this book isn't.

I anticipated certain pleasures. Anais Nin. The very name is synonymous with eroticism. So, I opened this book with great expectations. And like Pip in the Dickens novel, I was often confused. Nin turned out to be my Estella. She plays games and at times leaves me cold.

"A glass bell," according to Collins Dictionary, is "a bell shaped cover used to protect flower arrangements or fragile ornaments or to cover apparatus in experiments." This book contains all three: arrangements of thoughts, fragile lives, and experimental writing.

For a glimpse, here is the opening paragraph of "Ragtime."

"The city was asleep on its right side and shaking with violent nightmares. Long puffs of snoring came out of the chimneys. Its feet were sticking out because the clouds did not cover it altogether. There was a hole in them and the white feathers were falling out. The city had untied all the bridges like so many buttons to feel at ease. Wherever there was a lamplight the city scratched itself until it went out."

Glass bell. Bell jar. Nin is no Plath. Though, Nin's heart is a poet's as this passage proves. I wish she had developed this side of the collection more and not hurried to self publish at the end of the Second World War. T. S. Eliot came to my mind as I read and wished there had been more of those wonderful leaps of imagination. As it is I was reminded of early Jean Rhys who works the short story form better. Painful, oppressed, and suffocating women's lives sit under this bell. Smash that glass, I say. Breathe! Give us more cities at night, dear Nin, or at least more joy under those sheets.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been meaning to eventually read some Anais Nin since learning that she had tried and failed to strike up a correspondence with Anna Kavan. (Here's a letter from Kavan to her publisher saying she should probably reply. As far as I know she didn't).

But reading this slim and originally self-published volume (type-set herself on a hand press! diy was way more diy pre-xerox) of stories, glimmmers, dreams, I can see exactly why Nin might have seen in Kavan some sort of kindred. In 1948 Kavan published the voluptuously nocturnal Sleep Has His House, a self-described attempt to elaborate a theory of "nighttime language", often read as a dream diary but always seeming to me to be a more measured illumination of the inner life of its gradually withdrawing heroine. And here, in stories like "Ragtime" and "Houseboat", Nin seems to have been building her own hyper-vivid language of peripheral pathways, of the somnambulant and obscure, rendering experience from within as much as from without. (A Kavan blurb by Lawrence Durrell linked them both, along with Woolf and Barnes, in a "subjective feminine tradition"). So I can see Nin's apparent hopes in a kindred. But her own words stand effectively by themselves. Her opening passages especially speak graceful and original volumes:

The current of the crowd wanted to sweep me along with it. The green lights on the street corners ordered me to cross the street, the policemen smiled to invite me to walk between the silver-headed nails. Even the autumn leaves obeyed the current. But I broke away from it like a fallen piece. I swerved out and stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the quays. Below me flowed a river. Not like the current I had just broken from, made of dissonant pieces colliding rustily, made of hunger and desire.

(including one of her husband Ian Hugo's fantastically apt engravings, which I think were only in the old home-printed editions of 300 then 100 more! Obviously not my copy.)

Or the nightmarish hospital scenes from the final story, "Birth", a terrifying account of attempting to deliver an already-dead child before it kills its mother (possibly Nin herself):

Am I pushing or dying? the light up there, the immense round blazing white light is drinking me. It drinks me slowly, inspires me into space. If I do not close my eyes, it will drink all of me. I seep upward, in long icy threads, too light, and yet inside me there is a fire too, the nerves are twisted, there is no rest from this long tunnel dragging me, or am I pushing myself out of the tunnel, or is the child being pushed out of me, or is the light drinking me. Am I dying? The ice in the veins, the cracking of the bones, this pushing in darkness, with a small shaft of light in the eyes like the edge of the knife, the feeling of a knife cutting the flesh, the flesh somewhere is tearing as if it were burned through by a flame, somewhere my flesh is tearing and the blood is spilling out. I am pushing in the darkness, in utter darkness.

Not everything had me so gripped as these admittedly, as many of the stories are more in the vein of elaborately detailed portraiture. But when she has a story to tell, her manner of telling brings out rarely matched power.

[Rowena · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first Anais Nin book and I found it so beautiful! Her short stories are real poetry. She has a really unique command of the language. I really wasn't expecting to enjoy this book but now I'm definitely going to read more of her works.

[Izzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My best friend Elia, who is also one of the few persons whose opinion I trust, recommended this book to me. She was in her Nin phase and I thought I'd give it a try too. When I started reading it, I was very surprised. My first impression was that I can't understand anything! I like clear plots and these short stories were everything but clear. I tried to analyse what was happening and realized that they were written in such way on purpose. It is not simply the author's mark; because half way through the book we discover another writing style, the ordinary straight forward one which was as good as the latter, if not better. In my opinion, the author's aim in the first few short stories was not to give the reader something obvious that can be easily enjoyed. Instead, she wanted him/her to read for the sake of the printed words and not the story itself. The beginning and the ending are not per say, important to her in these stories as much as being able to convey the feelings, and that I confirm she did do excellently!
Even though I did not follow the plots quite well, this did not stop me from re reading many passages over and over again because they were just mind blowing. I knew from the beginning that I was dealing with a strong author. Then half way through the book, I had more than my dose of satisfaction. The stories were clear, and I was able to appreciate every written letter. I highly recommend that you read these three stories: Hedja, The mouse, and Birth. The first talks about an oriental woman and her confidence issues. The second is about a maid and her life fears and finally the third deals with Nin's abortion. Described like that, you'd think nothing is original. I beg to differ. You just have to take my word for it and read them for yourself to see. Just amazing!
Finally, I just wanted to say that this book might be one of the hardest to explain. If I were to simply describe it, I would say that the first half of it if can be compared to abstract paintings: Unclear but beautiful. The second is more like clear normal paintings that are just perfect for my taste. The authors excelled in both types: Chapeau!

[Andrew Schultheis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short book of short stories that read almost like prose poems. Lush, grotesque, strange and labyrinthine. To be savored.

[Salem ☥ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All the beauty I thought lost in the world is in you and around you. When I am near you I no longer feel my being contracting and shriveling. This terrible fatigue which consumes me is lifted. This fatigue I feel when I am not with you is so enormous that it is like what God must have felt at the beginning of the world, seeing all the world uncreated, formless, and calling to be created. I feel a fatigue of the tongue seeking to utter impossible things until it twists itself into a knot and chokes me. I feel a fatigue at this mass of nerves seeking to uphold a world that is falling apart. I feel a fatigue at feeling, at the fervor of my dreams, the fever of my thought, the intensity of my hallucinations. A fatigue at the sufferings of others and my own. I feel my own blood thundering inside of me, I feel the horror of falling into abysms. But you and I would always fall together and I would not be afraid. We would fall into abysms, but you would carry your phosphorescences to the very bottom of the abysms. We could fall together and ascend together, far into space. I was always exhausted by my dreams, not because of the dreams, but because of the fear of not being able to return. I do need to return. I will find you everywhere. You alone can go wherever I go, into the same mysterious regions. You too know the language of the nerves, and the perceptions of the nerves. You will always know what I am saying even if I do not."

I cannot read Anaïs Nin ever again. Five stars for this passage alone. (I say, as I continue to read Anaïs Nin).

[Aliaa Mohamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

كعادة أناييس نن الاعتماد ع الاسلوب السريالي الغريب ف الكتابة ، وظهر ذلك جلياً هذه المرة ف قصصها القصيرة .

أجد صعوبة دائما ق تقييم كتاب يضم عدد من القصص لأي كاتب ، لأن هناك قصص تستحق العلامة الكاملة وقصص أخرى ليست بنفس الجودة ومن ثم أصبح ف حيرة عند وضع التقييم الكلي .

هناك بعض القصص التي أعجبتني كثيراً ف " تحت الجرس الزجاجي " وع رأسها الولادة وخديجة ، وهناك قصص أخرى أعجبتني ولكن مغزاها لم يصل إليّ بشكل كامل ولكني لا أعلم ما الذي تستخدمه نن يجعلني أنجذب إليها منذ الوهلة الأولى لدرجة جعلتني اقرأ لها ثلاث أعمال ف يومين فقط !

[Simon Robs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This deserves multiple readings, maybe different times to slither in among the low fruit and wafty intrigues of a Ms. Nin travelouge, interstices of what's happening found wanting, drubbing like her mirrored demons of joy. I'll couch her books next to Ms. Lispector 'cause they be sistas somehow.

[Orçun Güzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bu öykü derlemesinin 1990'da Can'dan tek baskı yapıp unutuluşa terk edilmesi inanılmaz. Okuduğum hiçbir şeye benzemiyor. Kısa önsözünden, Anais Nin'in, günlüğündeki kimi yaşantıları baz aldığını anlıyoruz; bu yaşantıları düşlerin diline tercüme etmiş. Çoğu öykü, düzyazı şiire yaklaşan bir üslup, soyutlamalar ve gerçeküstü bir kent atmosferi içeriyor. Bazı cümleleri hem hayranlıktan hem de anlamını tam kavrayabilmek için iki kez, yavaşça okumam gerekti. Bir geriye sayım gibi, 13 öykünün 11. ve 12.si, gerçekliğe yavaşça yaklaşıyor ve okurun ayakları yere basıyor. En son ve en öznel öykü ise, acı gerçekliğiyle surata yumruk gibi inen bir kapanış yapıyor.

[Renée Paule · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some lovely short stories in this book, with some important messages for Humanity. I particularly enjoyed reading 'Houseboat', 'Ragtime' and 'Hejda'.

Whereas Anais Nin is a lovely descriptive writer - overly so for my taste - I do sometimes struggle with metaphors such as "The bushes were soft hairy elbows touching mine".

[Asma Qannas · Rating 5 out of 5]

و أنا أتذكّر دائمًا ما وقع بين ديبوسي وإريك ساتي: قال ديبوسي لساتي إن مؤلفاته ليس لها شكل. فأجابه ساتي بأن أطلق على أحدها: "سوناتا في شكل الكمثرى"



يا للهول من أنتِ أناييس نن؟

رائعة جدًا رغم أني ارتبكت هل تستحق الخمس نجمات أم لا؟ حسنًا سأمنحها خمس نجمات للحس الفني، للذكاء، للعذوبة، الشفافية و رهافة الحدس.

أناييس نن مُبهجة جدًا تشعر بأنها كرنفال كبير يضم العديد من الاستعراضات، القصص في تناغم كبير، آه لكم أحب حين أشعر أني أرقص.

[Shaimaa Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

أول قراءة لأناييس نين وبالتأكيد لن تكون الأخيرة

[tortoise dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thirteen short stories by the infamous diarist.

Book Review: Under a Glass Bell is a collection of stories about language, the poetry of language, the beauty and magic of language, how to capture words that can describe indescribable emotions. In some of her work, Anais Nin can seem like one of those charming narcissists whose interest in their own life is so total that it becomes contagious, and only later does one wonder about spending a day wholly absorbed in someone else's, not-that-interesting, life. Of course, this is still better than those histrionic narcissists who drive one screaming from the room to avoid injury, to oneself or others. But Under a Glass Bell is not that, is not Anais Nin examining her life under a microscopic and in obsessive detail. This is not for everybody. This is a book for those who love language. Who love sentences that believe in spells and incantations and the power of language all in itself. This is not about plot or revelation, meaning or understanding. The only revelation is in the language. It can only be read slowly. Here is a sentence about the tramps living by the Seine: "They threw the newspapers in the river and this was their prayer: to be carried, lifted, borne down, without feeling the hard bone of pain in man, lodged in his skeleton, but only the pulse of flowing blood." From the same story ("Houseboat"): "Tiny birds sat in weeds asking for no food and singing no song but the soft chant of metamorphosis, and each time they opened their beaks the webbed stained-glass windows decomposed into snakes and ribbons of sulphur." If those sentences speak to you, you'll love Under a Glass Bell. I can see this book as a cult favorite for those who enjoy getting lost and then found again, overwhelmed and buried by emotions, sleep walking, mesmerized by words and syllables and images ("the dew of her anxiety clouded her face"). I can see Patti Smith enjoying this as some of the passages reminded me of her memoirs. Many of the stories are deep character sketches and portraits of people Nin knew (The Mouse," "The Mohican"). Some are stories of people she did not know, but imagined. Some are fables and fairy tales found in old houses. A couple entries, the "labyrinth" stories, relate to her famous diaries. Others are fantasies, illusions, hallucinations. Nin's deepest emotions are touched on here. One note: there's some controversy about the order of the stories. In 1995 Gunther Stuhlmann arranged the stories in "chronological order" per a revelatory introduction, which I haven't found yet. My collection, from 1948, was the original sequence. Under a Glass Bell is for those with unique and esoteric taste. This a book for wizards who can find a whole universe in 17 words. [3½★]

[Elia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really have no words to describe the world this book can put you in. I'm quoting Edmund Wilson on this one "They are half short stories, half dreams, and they mix a sometimes exquisite poetry with a homely realistic observation. They take place in a special world, in a world of feminine perception and fancy, which is all the more curious and charming for being innocently international." No wonder this is by far the most printed work of the artist :)

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in seminary days, during the end of my infatuation with C.G. Jung, I took the Myers-Briggs personality test twice, the two occasions separated by a couple of years. One administration had me pegged as an introvert, the other as an extravert.

I must be back in an extraverted phase currently, Nin's work, in this, her first collection of short stories, being more or less introverted. In any case, I preferred the less subjective stories, the ones with reference to objective locations such as her reminiscences of life on a houseboat on the Seine. The examples of greater subjectivity, such as the labyrinth tales (about her diaries), were, while often clever, a bit too fraught with idiosyncratic images for my taste.

This collection was read aloud over a series of days at Chicago's Heirloom Books.

[Andrew Schirmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I recall, a lovely collection. At some point I'm going to have to revisit and reevaluate Anais Nin. In high school, her diaries (picked up for reasons I can neither remember, nor fathom) were for me a gateway to a Paris and a literary world foreign and enticing. Nin introduced me to great writers and thinkers--Proust, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal--and those of a lower rung, but powerful yet--Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence, Otto Rank, Djuna Barnes. And I will never forget the voice of the diaries.

[Maha Alhasawi · Rating 5 out of 5]

نموذج فني مميز هي السيريالية ، لكن هذه القصص أشد جنونا من السريالية ، أشد ما أعجبني قصة جامع النفايات و ما بعدها ، تستحق العلامة الكاملة رغم ان الترجمة قاصرة شيئا ما .
عن دار أزمنه بترجمة محمود منقذ الهاشمي

[محمد أحمد خليفة · Rating 3 out of 5]

لمن قرأ "دلتا ڤينوس" لأناييس نن، فهذه المجموعة القصصية بلا شك مغايرة تمامًا لسرد "نن" الإيروتكي الجنسي، فالقصص هنا مزيج من الواقعية والسيريالية والفنتازيا، وهناك الكثير من الإحالات لأحداث مرت بها المؤلفة، واقتباسات من يومياتها، مما يضع تحديًا أمام القارىء العادي غير المتمرس في قراءة أدب "نن" أو جماعة "هنري ميللر" على وجه العموم.
إن التنوع الذي تنتهجه الثيمات المختلفة للقصص من حيث البنية السردية يجعل المجموعة القصصية ككل نسق متميز ومتسق مع اختلاف الذائقة الأدبية لجمهور القراء، غير أنَّ الإفراط في السيريالية الذي شاب بعض القصص، جعلها بالكاد مفهومة المغزي والسرد، كما أن الترجمة، رغم جودتها، لم تنجح في نقل روح بعض الفقرات في ثلاث أو أربع قصص، فهذه القصص: "الموهيكي" و"رجتِمْ" و"المتاهة" و"من يرى كل شيء" التي جمعت في البنية السردية بين السيريالية والفنتازيا، لن تجدي معها سوى ترجمة روح النص وليس النص ذاته، لنقل المعنى بوضوح للقارىء.
أرى إجمالًا أن القصص القصيرة في هذه المجموعة كانت ممتعة، وأن العمق النفسي والفلسفي الذي عرضت به المؤلفة أفكارها في الحديث عن شخصيات القصص يدعو للتأمل ويثير العاطفة والوجدان، كما أن السيريالية التي تصف بها المؤلفة رؤى الشخصيات أو رؤاها الذاتية في القصص قد أضفت على سردها غلالة من السحر الذي يستغرق القارىء في عوالم الخيال واللاواقعية التي تفصلنا قليلًا عن الواقع المادي الجامد الذي نحياه ويحيانا.

[Ocean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not the biggest fan of short stories, I'd rather relish in a good long one if I have the time and energy for it, but this was just lovely.
There are 13 short tales in this book, all of them very dreamlike, almost abstract in places but the writing is so excellent, the metaphors so well chosen they enchanted me into believing it was all real.

This was my first book of this author, but I am dying to read her journals which I have also purchased recently. I would highly recommend this colourfull and stirring collection to anyone !

[Marta ౨ৎ˚ · Rating 3 out of 5]

the stories here and mostly no plot just vibes and that's not exactly what i want in my short stories

nevertheless, the writing is pretty so bonus points for that

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Under a Glass Bell begins like a dream and never really wakes up. It is clear from the outset that Nin is no ordinary writer and you have to get used to the bizarre and vague world she mixes up. The stories have an otherworldly feel, but also the feel of being on the edge of society, the language and the world of the outsider, the non-conformist, the homeless and displaced, the nomad and the mystic. "Houseboat" is the first and longest story here and it sets the tone. Like many of these tales, Nin sets "Houseboat" in a mysterious and misty Paris, floating down the Senne in the titular home. It is beautiful at times, and very evocative. Details are important and, simultaneously, irrelevant. Think the cartoon-like world of Amelie (for the beauty) and even a touch of Wes Anderson (for the ridiculous). Whereas Anderson balances that ridiculous world with something intriguing, the worlds of Anais Nin often become tiring. The narrative jumps too often and never takes hold of you. The characters, like the houseboat resident in the first story, are lost, lonely and sympathetic, but they often remain in the realms of irreality and fail to be memorable.

The circus dream feel continues in "The Mouse", one of the better stories in the collection. Here Nin remains with the character and hooks you with her tragedy. It tells of a serving girl (again in Paris, again the river) and an accidental pregnancy then a dangerous abortion. The mix of Nin's magical style with hard reality combines to make "The Mouse" a much more memorable story. Similarly "Under a Glass Bell" has characters that stick in your mind; a sister and two brothers seemingly frozen in time in a crystaline, fragile old manor house filled with a kind of stagnant beauty. There's something of the decrepid, tumble down romance of Gormenghast and the awful, mumified horror of Lovecraft. It is a mysterious and sumptuous fairy tale, a sleeping Cinderella palace, that fits perfectly to Nin's style in this collection.

Unfortunately the ingredients don't always mix well and the vagueries of the setting, the jarring narratives and dreamlike characters turn most of the rest into confusing muddles. Most of them are too short anyway to truly latch on to, a difficult middle ground between poetry and vignette that ends up being something like a fading dream. At the end Nin gives us two stories with something to hold on to. "Hedja" is fairy tale and romantic tragedy with the feel of Eastern mythology, but "Birth", the last story, is grounded in a cold, hard reality and is the first time one feels that Nin's own voice comes through at last. It's powerfully emotional, a heart wrenching and disturbing story about a stillborn child and the mother's wish to see her baby. Nin manages all of this without sacrificing the stylistic approach of the rest of the collection and the tragedy hits harder because of it. Throughout the collection there is no doubt that Nin can write beautifully and her imagery is occasionally really beautiful. But it is when something of her self rises to the surface, when her characters become real and relatable, that they succeed in being something else, something more than a trippy dreamscape, and turn into something haunting and memorable. 4

[Perla · Rating 4 out of 5]

القصص الأخيرة في المجموعة هي التي جعلتني اضع النجمات الأربع، أناييس مغرمة بسرد التفاصيل وغرائبية الوصف، تبدو قصصها كجولة سياحية ثرية بالأحداث في مدن منتقاة بعناية ..الأشخاص والأماكن والأوقات التي تجيد غزلها مع المجريات فتبدو كنسيج معتنى به.
القصص الأولى تفتقر لدقة في الترجمة، الترجمة التي تدفع القاريء للمضي في القصة باستمتاع وانسجام، الصفحات مفعمة بتفاصيل دقيقة كانت تحتاج ربط محكم و سرد سلس. عموما الحكم ع مجموعة قصصية ليس كالحكم ع رواية او غيرها، لكل قصة اسلوبها وظرفها وبنيتها، و إلا فالمجموعة غاية في الإمتاع.

[Elli · Rating 3 out of 5]

An collection of short stories, evocative of madness, poverty and the meaningless cruelty of life for those people who haven't kept up with the flow of the rest of society.

[pennyg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really not sure what I’ve just read. A collection of stories, a string of words. Some quite lovely, particularly, oddly, the first one or two pages of each story. Around the third page they drift into something else, certainly plotless, at times tangentially wordy, stream of consciousness. I am certain I have missed the point, obscure but relevant as it is. Never sure if I am reading something difficult yet profound or just plain under-edited bunk. I may have needed more coffee, more wine or more education. I did enjoy the lovely parts and am still puzzling out the rest.

[مصطفى درويش · Rating 3 out of 5]

التجربة الأولى لأناييس نن، وعودة لقراءة القصة القصيرة بعد غياب طويل.
هذه القصة اشتريتها من ركن دار أزمنة في يناير بمعرض الكتاب ٢٠١٤ وفتحتها للتصفح في أكتوبر من نفس العام ولم أفهم أي شيء حينها، وبعد ٤ أعوام بالضبط، وبعد العديد من القراءات أصبحت أكثر قدرة عما كنت عليه.
في العموم المجموعة لطيفة. منها ما أعجبني ومنها ما لم أتجاوب معه.
صنعت المجموعة ذكرى لدي لأني سجلت بصوتي على الساوند كلاود مقطعا منها وهذه أول مرة أسجل نصا وأضعه للغير . المقطع تحديدا من قصة (الرائي كل شيء).
التقييم بثلاث نجوم لما أشرت عنه في البداية.
تجربة ستجعلنا لا نمانع في القراءة لها مرة أخرى.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I picked up this book but it certainly wasn't what I got! Under a Glass Bell is complex and brimming with cultural references I don't get. It was a hard slog of a read in places. The final two short stories in this collection, however, were amazing. I found myself identifying with Hejda and empathising with the journey of the protagonist in Birth. I'm glad I read this book but I suspect I'd need to read it several times to truly engage with what Nin is trying to say.

[Beatriz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Increíble el estilo de Anaïs Nin. Me aventuré con estos relatos cortos, buenísima traducción del francés al catalán.
Lo he leído sin prisa, uno o dos relatos al día, con miedo a que se acabase.
Nin es adictiva, crea una atmósfera onírica donde se mezclan el surrealismo y el inconsciente… 5/5 sin duda

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting.

[Flora ❄ · Rating 1 out of 5]

ما هذا ...!
ما الذي تتحدث عنه هاته القصص؟ هل انا التي فقدت تركيزي ام القصص غريبة وغير مفهومة ؟؟

[AISHA · Rating 1 out of 5]

خيبت ظني باستثناء قصتين اعجبنني البقية كان سيئ للغاية وممل