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Djuna is a woman of forty with an unexplained fortune. A
former ballet dancer, her only friends are associates from
that world, men who tend to attract her by their least mature
qualities. So when she meets seventeen-year-old Paul, she
is stirred to her depths. Paul is in flight from his father,
and she, for reasons buried in her past, needs the opposition
of a father figure to sharpen her own desire . . .
Set against the cafe-life of Montmartre, Children of the
Albatross remains one of Nin’s most poignant works,
which delicately captures the nuances and half-dreamed
sensations
of adolescent love.
'A work which makes its impression page by page by style
and authority. An evocation of love and adolescence, it is
an evasive, atmospheric book, but in fact it possesses strength,
passion and sadness, being like the dancer Djuna who is its
central figure and much tougher than she looks.' — Sunday
Times
‘Oscillates with sensibility like a cat’s whisker,
and catches the nuance of a nuance with delicate dexterity’
— Daily Telegraph
‘A fascinating piece of writing’ — Daily
Express
‘An abstract, psychic music, a dance of generalities
and types, charming and suggestive’ — New York
Times
ANAÏS NIN was born in Paris in 1903. Her first book
was published in the 1930s, and she went on to write stories
and a series of autobiographical novels, as well as her celebrated
volumes of erotica. Perhaps best known for her Journals,
her personal life and loves have attracted considerable attention
— partly through her association with Henry Miller and
his wife but also because for a number of years she was married
to two men at the same time, with neither finding out until
after her death in 1977. |
