« lessing likes »
-
Anna Kavan, Doris Lessing and bath plugs
blogPost, 26/05/2007Anna who? Hmm is it just me again? Anna Kavan nee Helen Woods, then Ferguson, born in Cannes probably in 1901, two divorces, nervous breakdowns, heroin addiction, name changes.
-
Introducing Anna Kavan
magazineArticle, 24/02/2011There’s an indispensable book called About Writing by Samuel R. Delany. In the first essay he cobbles together an eclectic list of authors that, ideally, the aspiring writer should read. Because Delany has read everything, you can bet his tastes are wide and varied. And it’s thanks to that book that I discovered Anna Kavan.
-
Love & Loss: Stories of the Heart
book, 1993The works of Jane Bowles, Edith Wharton, Rebecca West, and other distinctive voices of the 20th century are gathered here for the first time in a collection of 18 variously lyrical, piquant and bold stories which explore women's lives and loves, embracing moments daring and commonplace, public and private.
-
Anna Kavan - De Quincey's heir, Kafka's sister
blogPost, 07/12/2009Anna Kavan (April 10, 1901—1968; born Helen Emily Woods) was a British novelist, short story writer and painter.
-
Mon âme en Chine - Anna KAVAN
encyclopediaArticle, 15/03/2005Une femme rêve : Je suis seule dans un train, dans un compartiment de seconde classe ; au lieu de bagages, au lieu de cerveau, je porte une masse serrée de minuscules serpents gris dans mon crâne, (p. 14) De qui sont ces serpents ?
-
Time Bites
book, 2004Towards the end of this long life, Goethe said that he had only just learned how to read. In this collection of the very best of Doris Lessing's essays - never before published in book form - we are treated to the wisdom and keen insight of a writer who has herself learned, over the course of a long, rich, life, to read the world differently.
-
Anna Kavan
blogPost, 31/05/2007I can only apologize for being so distracted by bath plugs the last time I mentioned Anna Kavan.It can't have been helpful so now I plan to dedicate myself to the cause of Anna and ensure you all know about her without any deviation,hesitation or repetition whatsoever
-
Doris Lessing reviews new Anna Kavan bio
blogPost, 17/08/2006A new biography of Anna Kavan, A Stranger on Earth, by that pest Jeremy Reed is reviewed by Doris Lessing here: Independent Online Edition > Reviews. I call Jeremy Reed a pest because he has managed to write either Fiction or Non-Fiction on nearly ever fun subject. Every time I turn around to see what's been written about Rimbaud or Artaud, there's that damn Jeremy Reed. And now he has this biography coming out on my favorite fiction writer, Anna Kavan. Underappreciated she is, but then again you might easily believe that this is the way she would have wanted it. Her work has often been compared to Doris Lessing, so her thoughts on the subject are relevant:
-
10 More Great Writers Nobody Reads
blogPost, 18/02/2016At Writers No One Reads, our infrequently updated blog dedicated to overlooked, under-read, marginalized, minor, peripheral, goofy, weird, forsaken, out-of-fashion, overlooked, ahead of their time, and justly and unjustly obscure writers...
-
Ice by Anna Kavan
blogPost, 09/11/2011Ice by Anna Kavan was 70% off, I do not know the writer, but after reading Doris Lessing’s comment, I carted it off with the rest of the titles for purchase. The eerie and strangeness of the story seems an exciting read. I am intrigued how a heroine addict writes one of slipstream’s most significant novel.
-
On Anna Kavan
blogPost, 09/12/2011Anna Kavan, born Helen Ferguson in 1901 was a very English - and at the same time utterly alien - novelist whose own life took on the quality of an existential mystery. Praised by JG Ballard and Doris Lessing, drawing on Kafka and anticipating slipstream long before it became a genre in British writing, her novels described eerie states of dislocation; a lifelong heroin user, her prose has a needle-sharp precision but her subject matter was never drugs.
-
Anna Kavan: The Best Kept Secret Of English Modernism
blogPost, 01/02/2014We have dedicated this section of the website to the passing on of the good word of short story collections that we feel have been either been missed or forgotten about, for one reason or another, but that deserve and need to be read. The first one I’ve selected is Julia and the Bazooka by Anna Kavan. Anna who? Exactly.
-
Mercury by Anna Kavan
blogPost, 06/07/2012I thought from what was said about Anna Kavan's Mercury that it would be litfic uncomfortably fitted into the fantasy genre. This was largely confirmed when I saw that Doris Lessing had written the foreword, and what she had said about the book. Litfic and I seem to have an uneasy relationship. I generally don't like it, I'm getting the feeling I must be some sort of literary philistine.
-
Anna Kavan
webpage,‘I was about to become the world’s best kept secret; one that would never be told. What a thrilling enigma for posterity I should be.’ Thus does one of Anna Kavan’s characters describe herself in an unpublished short story, and we know that, as in much of Kavan’s writing, she was describing herself. An enigma the author remains, but her talent was none the less remarkable, and her works have been compared to that of Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka and acclaimed by writers from Anaïs Nin to J.B. Ballard.
-
Found Guilty: Anna Kavan's latest novel
newspaperArticle, 28/06/2007A lost manuscript of a novel by the British writer Anna Kavan - which turned up at the University of Tulsa of all places - will be published next week. I, for one, am deliriously happy about the publication of Guilty, since Anna Kavan, who died in 1968, is one our greatest and most original novelists.
-
Kafka's sister
magazineArticle, 31/07/2010Fuelled by heroin and self-exploration, Anna Kavan's underground Kafka-esque novels penetrated the human psyche in a manner that distrubed even JG Ballard.