Asylum Piece (Peter Owen Modern Classic) - Softcover

Kavan, Anna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0720611237 ISBN 13: 9780720611236

Publisher: Peter Owen, 2001

Synopsis

From the author of Ice, Anna Kavan's Asylum Piece is 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 Kavan’s deeply personal, restrained and almost foreign-accented style has no true model. The same characters who recur throughout - the protagonist’s 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, self-pity or sentiment that have marked more recent prozac memoirs.

About this title

About the Author

Anna Kavan was one of the greatest unsung enigmas in 20th-century British literature. Born Helen Ferguson, a fraught childhood and two failed marriages led her to change her name to that of one of her characters. Despite struggling with mental illness and heroin addiction for most of her life, she was still able to write fiction that was as powerful and memorable as any English female writer of the last 150 years.

From the Back Cover

'If only one knew of what and by whom one were accused, when, where and by what laws one were to be judged, it would be possible to prepare one's defence systematically and set about things in a sensible fashion.'

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 in a Swiss clinic. The sense of paranoia, of persecution by a foe or force that is never given a name, evokes The Trial by Kafka, a writer with whom Kavan is often compared, although her deeply personal, restrained and almost foreign-accented style has no true model. The same characters who recur throughout - the protagonist's unhelpful 'adviser', the friend/lover who abandons her at the clinic and an assortment of deluded companions - are sketched without a trace of the rage, self-pity or sentiment that have marked more recent accounts of mental instability.

'A writer of unusual imaginative power.' Edwin Muir

'An artist of great distinction.' L.P. Hartley

Edition details

• Publisher: Peter Owen
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0720611237
• ISBN 13: 9780720611236
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224