Anais Nin Books

...with "Tropic of Cancer." For newbies, read the synopsis of Anais Nin and Henry Miller at "wikipedia." Then start reading Volume 1 of Anais Nin's diaries (1931 - 1934). After a while, maybe 30 - 40 pages you will want to take a break. So, pick up "Tropic of Cancer" and read the first couple of chapters. Anais had Henry read her journals; Anais and Henry helped each other with each others works. The preface to "Tropic of Cancer" was written by Anais Nin (at least it was signed by her; legend has it that Henry actually wrote it). "Tropic of Cancer" was published (and immediately banned in the United States) in 1934. (By the way, off topic, Henry Miller reminds me a lot of Hunter S. Thompson, at least "Tropic of Cancer" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.")

A bit long and occasionally dense, but overall, a worthwhile and insightful glimpse into the life of a remarkable, thoughtful writer in 1930s France.

This is one of the most profound works of literature I have ever read. Nin leads you directly into her life, the nature of the people around her, her feelings and internal conflicts. She writes delicately and powerfully and womanly. Everyone should have a chance to read this.

ANAIS has been someone who has carried me through some tough times in the past...I read her at twenty...and twenty-three and twenty-six. Her troubles were my own and we were kin. She is meant to be read by anyone who loves life...in it's full fleshy sometimes heart rending reality. She writes with the open-heart of a poet, and leaves the reader feeling more than fed. READ ANAIS NIN!

I recomend reading Anais Nin's diary. The book is such poetic prose. Some sentences really took my breath away, the way she can captivate something so beautiful and human in simple words. Since it is a diary, its main focus is her life, but its not selfish, infact she mentions herself very little. The main focus is Henry (Miller) and June, his wife. When Ananis Nin falls inlove with someone, so does the reader. Her descriptive skills gave me goosebumps, you really can see it in your minds eye, hear the music or feel the softness of skin. I highly recomend this to anyone thinking about reading this book, you will come away with a slice of life from 1930's France.

Big fan of these two, but more of a Henry Miller fan personally. The letters bring Henry Miller out of his fiction/novels and bring him into the realm where Nin was in writing her Diaries. Good for that reason, two lovers but volatile ones. Testing sexual boundaries is a touchy thing, after all.

Like many others, I have been fascinated with and frustrated by Anais Nin for many years, since reading the first volume of her expurgated diary in 1977.

This volume of letters enables the reader who has already read other versions of the Nin-Miller story to form additional conclusions about what might actually have happened. Because the letters were sent into the possession of others, they were less subject to the constant revision and reinvention that bedevils all attempts to determine objective facts about the mercurial Nin.

If you are not already an amateur historian of literary trends of the 1930's, fear not. The letters are worth reading as an introduction to Anais Nin and Henry Miller as well, for they depict a real-life romance conducted by two who absolutely relished the game and were highly articulate in dramatically different ways.

Forget Nin's works of fiction, the journals, letters, and life are truly worth experiencing over and over again for their honesty, passion, and viewing the internal turned external for our benefit. Everyone knows of Miller's and Nin's relationhip, through "Henryand June" if anything, but it is through this work that we see them less as romantic figures and more as humans capable of the idiocy, devotion, and prolongation of things we should all end and just don't for whatever reason. This is a great buy if you are a lover a letters. Reading "Fire" is a must, however.

How much deeper can you get into a person's complexities and simplicities, understand the origin of their joys and frustrations, their motivators and their fears, if not by reading the letters they wrote to one another, and, in this case, one of their best friends and lovers?

This is a powerful door to Anais' heart and soul, and even more powerful than her diaries itself. Because here you get deep into one of the most significant periods of her life, the many years she let her own life and self entwined with Henry Miller's.

Indispensable reading for anyone, even more for those who admire Anais and Miller as ordinary people who loved each other, or as writers ahead of their time, unafraid of other people's opinions.

Immerse yourself: you're gonna want to sink.

Whatever you may think of her writing, Anaïs Nin was definitely a femme fatale. Henry Miller was, he claimed, the "happiest man alive." Together, Nin and Miller created a literary language for sexual fulfillment; she in a diary whose original form still remains unpublished, he in novels banned in both the United States and England until court cases in the early 1960s permitted their publication and turned Miller into something Nin had already achieved: the status of a cult hero.

Nin and Miller met in Paris in 1931. Miller, an aspiring novelist, wanted to meet the banker's pretty wife who had sung the praises of D.H. Lawrence and whose books had been deemed "pornography" outside of France. Neither Nin nor Miller, at that point, had published much. Their mutual interest, as they freely admit, was in sex and in each other and, consequently, they began a long affair.

It was during this affair that both Nin and Miller produced their finest writing--the writings that would eventually become Nin's two diaries and her novel, House of Incest, as well as Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring. Each believed in, and nurtured, the others genius and Miller wrote that Nin's diary would take its place "beside the revelations of St. Augustine, Petronius, Abelard, Proust and others."

Miller, only forty-one, but already somewhat down-and-out, fascinated the twenty-nine year old Nin, whose vague yearnings filled the many pages of the diary she had been keeping since the age of ten. "He's a man who makes life drunk. He is like me," she mused. Nin and Miller, however, were not alike. One of their most essential differences was a difference typical between men and women--Nin censored herself, while the world censored Miller.

Published in 1963, Nin's diary caused a literary sensation. It was begun as a letter to her father, a man who abandoned the family when Nin was only ten, and it remained intensely private. Revised into frequent distortions, the diary was a record of a compulsion to conceal as much as of a quest for feminine fulfillment. A mixture of fact, fantasy and calculated lies, Nin's editor asserts that the diary nevertheless presents a "psychological" truth. Kate Millett hailed Nin as "the mother of us all" and the women's movement immediately embraced her writings. Author Erica Jong said that no woman had told "the story of women's sexuality" more honestly than had Nin.

Despite the praise, if we read between the lines, while still observing Nin's frenetic whirl from bed to bed, we come to realize that she was really never satisfied. Her insatiable appetite aside, Nin was, at heart, a prudish libertine. Her childhood molestation by her father, whom she, herself, seduced as an adult a year after meeting Henry Miller, seems to have contributed greatly to her private inhibitions. Although she flitted from bed to bed she sadly confessed, "I am hellishly lonely." Instead of sex, Nin longed for "what I give Henry: this constant attentiveness."

In the "Black Lace Laboratory," as Miller's apartment was dubbed, Nin and Miller conducted literary and erotic experiments, prompting Nin to write him a thinly disguised warning to herself, "Beware just a little of your hypersexuality!" Toward the end of his life, unable to write about women except as prostitutes, Miller claimed not to know what the sexual revolution was about, saying that he had always loved and honored women. Nin agreed, saying that Miller was a romantic, rather than a rake. At eighty, Miller confessed that far too many people engaged in sex without love.

Basking in the warmth of Nin's caresses, her skilled editing of his work, and the material possessions she lavished upon him, Miller wrote prolifically and with a rare genius. Eventually, his romance with Nin faded (or warmed) into friendship, but the legacy of their literary teamwork remained: In 1974, Nin was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Los Angeles Times names her Woman of the Year in 1976, the same year Henry Miller received France's Legion d'honneur. The 1990 movie, Henry and June is a chronicle of Miller's affair with Nin, which later became a triangle involving Miller's wife, June.

Nin and Miller have become cultural icons. Nin is the focus of women's study courses as well as being included in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Miller and his work need no comment. Although both Nin and Miller were pioneers of free speech and sexual freedom, and both helped to forge a new literature and a new culture, the ultimate emptiness of their lives, with its attendant lack of depth and meaning point to the futility of their attempt to wrest security and happiness from sexuality alone.

"By excluding the work of women artists from history, men not only maintain control of women, but also of the world." Judy Chicago, original V-Warrior and PoMo high priestress, turned that tide. Dogmatic, didactic, hyperliteral and hypercritical, her influence (even before The Dinner Party) cannot be underestimated. This is 'back in the day' when art had a 'message,' but, all that, Chicago nevertheless ushered in today's chaos, and yesterday's identity politics, with her clever use of 'fem' (low) art elements and stubborn insistence on remembering all founding sisters. Duchamp met his match - and, bringing high icongraphy to 'women's lib,' the 1980s were born.

What a wonderful book this is; so inspired, so inspiring. Judy Chicago is simply brilliant. She has challenged patriarchal tyranny so courageously and insightfully that you can read this book again and again with acute pleasure.

Judy Chicago is such an intimate person, very emotional in her work, and through this book, you will grow to understand why and how she produced work in her very own style of emotion. She is truely a Goddess of Art, and a very strong women of which I could only strive to be! This book is so empowering, read it if you have any doubts about your place as a women dealing with being an artist. BRAVO!!

This is a terrific book that demonstrates that women are able to persevere with their art even though males are trying to stop us. It seems that the white male patriarchal art world will continue to try to silence us, BUT WE WILL BE HEARD! I salute all my sisters in their struggle to produce art that, while disturbing white males, will prove that it is women who are making the most significant art in the world today. Judy Chicago has won again!

This book was like a loyal companion as I experienced my own struggles as a woman artist. I commend Judy Chicago for sharing her experiences, personal decisions, and insights. Reading this particular book helped me to finish my most recent exhibition of work. Thank you, Judy!

Anais Nin began a letter to her father, on the ship that carried her, her mother and brothers, away from him, away from Europe and to New York City. She was 11. The letter was never sent, but instead developed into a diary that would become legendary by the time she reached her late 20s. Henry Miller helped feed the legend by stating that, once published, Anais Nin's diary would take its place beside the great literary revelations of the 20th Century. Upon publication in the 1960s, many felt that the acclaim was justified. Though original plans called for the publication of only one volume, demand was so great that seven volumes in all would be eventually be published.

In this present volume (1939-1944), Anais has taken refuge once again in the United States, escaping the war that has engulfed most of Europe and destroyed her much beloved literary community back home in Paris. This is the second time she has had to immigrate to the US, and its culture seems just as alien and unwelcoming as it did the first time. Nin finds the transition particularly difficult because her "European" writing style is not warmly received; American audiences are more interested in realism than sur-realism. Her work is deemed obscure and un-publishable. But Anais Nin does not cave to pressure. She forges a community with other artists in the Manhattan literary world, creating something close to what she had in Paris with Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell.

I enjoyed this volume because, well, I'm fascinated with Anais Nin's work, persona, and overall career. I enjoy its panoramic quality, and that it gives me insight into a world of which I would otherwise be totally ignorant, as I was merely two-years-old when Anais Nin died in 1977. But I think it would be true to say that general readership would probably stop at volume two of this series. In other words, unless you are heavily interested in Anais Nin, this volume and all future installments probably will not grab you. If you are like me, then you have four more volumes in this "expurgated" series to look forward to, then four volumes of the "unexpurgated" series, and yet four more volumes of "early diaries." See you then! :)

Andrew Parodi

Anais Nin began a letter to her father, on the ship that carried her, her mother and brothers, away from him, away from Europe and to New York City. She was 11. The letter was never sent, but instead developed into a diary that would become legendary by the time she reached her late 20s. Henry Miller helped feed the legend by stating that, once published, Anais Nin's diary would take its place beside the great literary revelations of the 20th Century. Upon publication in the 1960s, many felt that the acclaim was justified. Though original plans called for the publication of only one volume, demand was so great that seven volumes in all would be eventually be published.

In this present volume (1939-1944), Anais has taken refuge once again in the United States, escaping the war that has engulfed most of Europe and destroyed her much beloved literary community back home in Paris. This is the second time she has had to immigrate to the US, and its culture seems just as alien and unwelcoming as it did the first time. Nin finds the transition particularly difficult because her "European" writing style is not warmly received; American audiences are more interested in realism than sur-realism. Her work is deemed obscure and un-publishable. But Anais Nin does not cave to pressure. She forges a community with other artists in the Manhattan literary world, creating something close to what she had in Paris with Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell.

I enjoyed this volume because, well, I'm fascinated with Anais Nin's work, persona, and overall career. I enjoy its panoramic quality, and that it gives me insight into a world of which I would otherwise be totally ignorant, as I was merely two-years-old when Anais Nin died in 1977. But I think it would be true to say that general readership would probably stop at volume two of this series. In other words, unless you are heavily interested in Anais Nin, this volume and all future installments probably will not grab you. If you are like me, then you have four more volumes in this "expurgated" series to look forward to, then four volumes of the "unexpurgated" series, and yet four more volumes of "early diaries." See you then! :)

Andrew Parodi

anais was so frank & true to her feelings& what she wrote was warm & sweet,though her erotic story was still a bit leg-behind than henry miller's, she's still a very good female writer.

I found out some volumes of A.Nin's series of Journals some months ago and I was really amazed : how precise and how many literary encounters! Being a student in American Literature and an apprentice diarist myself, I think Nin's skill for autobiography and her sense of time are optimal points to last longer in diaries!

This book is not as compelling as "Incest", but it's still Anais: still burning, still feeling, still wholly human, with all flaws and wishy-washiness included. But again, I warn away people who may not be down with heavily sexual content. If you are, though...

"This is not a lie. I was starting to tell lies and struck a truth! Very often I tell lies that are deeply true."
-Anais Nin, January 17, 1937

Diary opening with a visit to New York accompanying Dr Otto Rank. Searches for release from Rank. Back to Paris, Henry, Hugh, and to find Gonzalo More. Desriptions of interior worlds built for Hugh, Gonzalo, and Henry. Beautiful. Houseboat on the Seine, "Nanankepichu", Villa Seurat, Louveciennes.

As follower of Anais' Diaries (expurgated or not) and her novels I would like to express my admiration and my curiosity for her amazing literature and her rare personality, motivated again by "Fire". I believe that Anais was able to enjoy sex simultaneously with several men, each one of them however, playing an appropriate , no transferable, role: Hugh (husband),Joaquin Nin (father-lover),Eduardo Sanchez (cousin-brother), Henry Miller (friend-lover), Gonzalo More (lover-friend) and others. Occidental society usually attribute this promiscuous behavior only to men.As Anais shows, this may happen also among ladies, perhaps more often than accepted . Indeed, these "faults" may be heavily damned and punished by society when perpetrated by ladies. Probably Anais was the first woman , brave and courageous enough , to describe her own experiences and feelings about eroticism and sensuality written from a female point of view. Actually, looking at her inner mirror she describes herself with delicacy , ever avoiding disgusting pornography. I believe that Anais spent her life searching a Big One Love . As a result she found many "Love" and many Lovers . The sum of them never reached totality. Her Love was her fantasy and her invention, hence endless and inaccessible. On the other hand, in this and other books Anais masterly present unknown, almost domestic features and characteristic of the personality of several men and ladies who were outstanding representatives in art, literature, theatre, politics as Neruda, Alberti, Dali, Allendy, Rank, Gore and others.

Anais Nin was raised a devout Catholic and to earn her family's love she was expected to be demure, self-sacrificing, hard-working, and chaste. When her father abandoned the family she assumed, as children sometimes do, that he had left because she wasn't "good" enough. She played the role of "good girl" for twenty years in response. Then all hell broke loose.

What I believe is different about FIRE is that it reveals Anais's explorations and experiementation with her inner "bad girl" in a way that she had only just begun in HENRY AND JUNE and INCEST. In it she is still married to Hugh and involved with Henry Miller, but in FIRE she has a relationship with the famous analyst Otto Rank that takes some treacherous twists and turns. Her writing is as wonderful as ever. For the Nin fan, this diary is yet another must-read.

Ms. Allerdyce, knows her stuff! If you are an Anais Nin fan, and you want a comparitive study, this is the book for you!

Anais Nin lived a life of conflicting allegiances. She attempted to decide whether to be "a woman helping men" or "a creative artist competing with men." Torn between obligations and freedom she shifted her focus back and forth from male to female and from self to other. Acknowledging Nin as an important Modernist and Feminist writer who created an authentic feminine approach to art, author Richard-Allerdyce focuses on how Nin healed herself with writing and psychoanalysis. This in-depth study of Nin's work using the four unexpurgated diaries, has a title by title approach making the book more accessible to readers. Nin's sensitivity changed the nature of life and art and the media-conditioned response to both. Nin wanted to live an active life with no one telling hr what to do. ` The later volumes of the diary showed Nin moving away from polarization of others and self, of fiction and diary, of live and death. Richard-Allerdyce shows how Nin came to understand that opposites are merely fuctions of each other, how the personal deeply lived becomes the univeral Modernism and Feminism helped Anais Nin remake herslf. She showed that women can get over society's programing, education and taboos. She focused on the bond between all women. Her writing was therapy not only for herself but for her readers. She helped them create themselves and their world. This book should become a classic in its field. Maryanne Raphael l

I adore Anais Nin's insights, her honesty, the way fire rolls off her tongue like something suddenly coming alive--
And I so wish I could have been at 92nd Street in New York in 1977 when she read excerpts from her some of her diaries.

I guess the next best thing was listening to that lush, french accent as she read, laughed, and answered some of the audience's quesions about her favorite books, authors, and of course, Henery Miller!
Someone had asked Anais if she were a Romantic--and I loved her answer--"I once was in Italy and I saw a lovely house-boat which I would have loved to live in for a year--and then one day years later, I picked up a newspaper and noticed there was a house-boat for sale. I went to look at it--But if I hadn't romanticized earlier about this houseboat--I would not have been aware of this. This is romanticim to me."
Interesting.

Excerpts from The Diary of Anais Nin is worth listening to--allow the fire to flow into your ears!

To hear Ms. Nin's sweet voice after reading her works for 25 years was mesmerizing and unexplicably delicious and delightful! She brought the selections to life as no other reader could have. If you love Anais Nin, this is a must-have!!

Excerpt From the review appearing in the 1997 issue of Anais: An International Journal:

By Marion Fay

The title of this welcome and much-needed volume, Anais Nin: A Book of Mirrors, is both appropriate and provocative. The mirror concept works because this hefty book of some 420 pages does indeed reflect multiple aspects of Anais Nin as seen by its sixty-five contributors. Moreover, it not only reveals how many readers have seen themselves reflected in her work and in her person, but also the ways in which many of us have been refracted--literally opened-up--and, to use one of her favorite terms, "transmuted" by the experience.

The mirror concept, of course, also carries with it the notion of partial vision, indeed distortion, implications that underlie attacks on Anais Nin by those who despair at her omissions of facts, who focus exclusively on externally manifest behavior.

The seventy-five entries brought together by Paul Herron include essays, scholarly comment, excerpts from literary works and interviews, poems, and personal testimonials, along with photos and illustrations. Most of the contributions reflect favorably upon Anais Nin, but some raise serious questions about her love affairs, duplicities, and the professed incest with her father. Wendy DuBow, for one, who in 1994 edited a volume of interviews with her, points to weaknesses in Nin's thinking and writing, and she makes clear that her interest in Nin is scholarly and sociological, and not governed by any emotional attachment.

The list of those who responded included well-known Nin scholars, such as Sharon Spencer and Suzanne Nalbantian, contributors to this journal, psychologists, non-traditional healers, personal friends, and literary figures like Erica Jong and Allen Ginsberg.

Several early selections speak of visits to Louveciennes, the village that for many readers situates Nin in place and time because of its prominence in the first volume of The Diary of Anais Nin. Jacques G. Lay, the village's honorary deputy mayor, laments that Anais Nin has been "forgotten at home," but celebrates the fact that thousands of visitors from around the world come to Louveciennes "to imbibe the air Anais breathed, the atmosphere she loved."

Several selections in A Book of Mirrors trace the steps of researchers who examined some of the one hundred and fifty bound original diary manuscripts in the Special Collection of the Library at the University of California in Los Angeles. Elyse Lamm Pineau, a professor at Southern Illinois University, unexpectedly came across a cache of audio tapes recording Nin in action, and Elizabeth Podnieks intersperses carefully chosen passages from her own diary with excerpts from Nin's as part of an inquiry into what makes a diary "genuine."

Diane Richard-Allerdyce reveals the evolution of her attitude toward Anais Nin: from glowing adulation--combined with an unwillingness to criticize her--to a reasoned appreciation of Nin's life and work. Discoursing on the writing of her play, "A Literary Soulmate," an excerpt of which appears in the book, Richard-Allerdyce examines Nin's influence on contemporary women who take up writing. The play itself deconstructs the several versions of Nin's "Birth" story and, in doing so, comments on such topics as the conflict between pregnancy and career, which tortures so many women, and on the nature of truth.

Truth-telling, and truth-avoidance in the case of Anais Nin also occupy some other contributors, offering accusations and justifications. In a short essay, Nuria Ribera i Gorriz pushes us to think about the distinction between the intent to deceive (a form of lying) and the intent to protect the self and/or others (a form of half-truth).

The last section of A Book of Mirrors deals with Nin's final days, a sad story, unknown to many of her readers--Barbara Kraft reports on the many hours she spent with Nin as she lingered on the borderline of death. In an excerpt from her manuscript, An Edited Life, Kraft presents Nin in the guise of a character, Maite Lerin, who is experiencing but also reporting on her own dying.

In a brief review one can only suggest the wide range of views, and the variety of modes and styles of expression gathered in this so aptly titled Book of Mirrors. It is not a book to be devoured whole. Rather, it is one to browse and ponder over time. Laden with rewarding insights and warm feelings, it also occasionally asks the reader to enter supernatural zones, where dreams, spirits, and zany coincidences predominate. More than anything, perhaps, A Book of Mirrors once again provides evidence of Anais Nin's extraordinary, and seemingly perpetual, influence on vast numbers of people, no matter what her harshest critics may have to say.

Book Review by Maryanne Raphael, Writers World ANAIS NIN, A BOOK OF MIRRORS does what no biography, no single study can do. It gives us a glimpse of the thousand faces of Anais Nin. It is an exciting anthology of personal memoirs, interviews, tributes in prose and poetry, fantasies and essays. Anyone opening this book should be warned he or she may be risking their lives as they now know it. More than 60 authors share how Anais changed their lives and gave it meaning. Nin's passionate love affair with life is contagious. In his foreword, Gunther Stuhlmann called Anais, "an exemplary sensitive and complex modern woman who sought her salvation in her art." Anais used her life to create, to relate and to fascinate. Her writings help us to return to our most precious dreams. Anais has us re-evaluate everything, dig deeper into ourselves. She becomes a mirror for each of us, an opportunity for us to examine our souls and for the first time recognize who we really are. MIRRORS is a magnificent celebration of Life. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about Anais or about themselves. The end

There is no simple way to explain the meaning of human relationships. Anyone who believes that our socialization as human beings can be easily understood should read 'In Favor of the Sensitive Man'.

The twenty seven pieces included cover Nin's main interest: feminine sexuality, human relationships, and eroticism. The book is divided into 3 sections: Women and Men, "Writing, Music, and Films", Enchanted Places. A book as intelligent as this about human interaction had to written by a someone with a background in psychology and a keen inner awareness.

Anais Nin (1903-1977) was born in France. She began to keep a journal of her life in 1914, when her father, composer Joaquin Nin abandon the family. These journals were published in 1966 and lifted Nin from obscurity into the celebrity. Nin studied psychoanalysis under Otto Rank and practiced as a therapist in New York. At some point, she was even a patient of Carl Jung.

As Nin writes, there are books which we read early in life, which sink into our consciouness. I read the famous Nin "dairies" in my teens. I am convinced that Anais' is a brilliant woman and a gifted writer. This book is a confirmation of those beliefs.

The book is divided into essay on 3 topics: Women and Men; Writing, Music and Films; and Enchanted Places. This is a very developed sense of Anais - open, radiant, and sincere as always. There are several distinct themes throughout the collection. One of these themes, and to her, the most important, is that women (and men) must first come to know themselves intimately and erotically before they can successfully contribute to any other person, group, society, or otherwise. "In denying the need of intimacy with ourselves, our extroverted culture destroys the possibility of intimacy with others." Nin openly discusses her knowledge of feminism and the roles women have traditionally held in dealing with themselves. She also voices in several essays, her opposition to women's "listing of griefs against men." She emphasizes the rebuilding of the self through poetry and eroticism. "Eroticism is one of the basic means of self-knowledge, as indispensible as poetry."

The book is full of discussion of feminism, eroticism, psychology of the self, our roles in relationships, art, and society. There are 2 fascinating interviews with Nin, several of Nin's essays on other writiers and filmmakers, and her magical recreations of enchanted places. It is a must read for Anais Nin fans. It's short, it's sweet (I couldn't put it down), and intellectually, but most importantly, emotionally fulfilling.

PHOTOGRAPHIC SUPPLEMENT TO THE DIARY OF ANAIS NIN is a thin volume of black-and-white photos that accompanied the first group of her published diaries. The new "unexpurgated" versions usually have pictures in the volumes of diaries themselves.

I enjoyed this book because it adds a level of understanding to be able to see pictures of the people that Anais is writing about, including herself. I had no idea who Anais was before I found this book, and it made me interested in her. My favorite shots are of her in Cuba, Mexico, and on her house boat in Paris. She really was a beautiful woman.

Andrew Parodi

PHOTOGRAPHIC SUPPLEMENT TO THE DIARY OF ANAIS NIN is a thin volume of black-and-white photos that accompanied the first group of her published diaries. The new "unexpurgated" versions usually have pictures in the volumes of diaries themselves.

I enjoyed this book because it adds a level of understanding to be able to see pictures of the people that Anais is writing about, including herself. I had no idea who Anais was before I found this book, and it made me interested in her. My favorite shots are of her in Cuba, Mexico, and on her house boat in Paris. She really was a beautiful woman.