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Guilty by Anna Kavan
webpage, 20/04/2007Rhys Davies, one of Anna Kavan’s few close friends, wrote an introduction for Julia and the Bazooka (1970), a posthumous collection of her stories linked by their common allusion to her heroin habit.
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Friends of Promise: Cyril Connolly and the World of Horizon:
book, 2009This original book gives a revealing picture of the extraordinarily talented group of men and women who produced Horizon, the foremost literary review of the 1940s. Published monthly in Bloomsbury, Horizon was a cultural beacon during the dark days of the Second World War; it was brilliantly eclectic and fiercely independent. Its principal editor, Cyril Connolly, regarded the pleasures of life and art as inseparable, cultivating his love of literature with the same intensity that characterized his love of good food and fine wine, and beautiful women.
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Anna Kavan © Orlando Project
webpage, 2006-2014Women's Writing in the British isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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Anna Kavan's New Zealand: a Pacific interlude in a turbulent life
book, 2009New Zealanders live 'in temporary shacks, uneasily, as reluctant campers too far from home', wrote Anna Kavan in a London magazine in 1943. Her seemingly negative comments created a stir both in the UK and New Zealand and suggested Kavan felt nothing but antipathy for the country. However, in researching this prize-winning author of nineteen books, Dr Jennifer Sturm uncovered letters and unpublished short stories written during Kavan's sojourn in New Zealand that show a more complex, affectionate and significant response. Those stories are published here for the first time, along with a fascinating discussion of this experimental writer and talented artist, who struggled with bouts of depression and insecurity, as well as heroin addiction and a stream of unconventional love affairs. Kavan roamed the world trying to find a home, and although her stay in New Zealand was for less than two years, her stories reveal a country where she found temporary peace, a country she captures in a warm and astute gaze. This book provides an intriguing insight, not only into the life and writing of Anna Kavan but also New Zealand of the 1940s.
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I Am Lazarus: Stories by Anna Kavan
blogPost, 07/01/2015Unlike Julia and the Bazooka, this collection of Kavan’s short fiction was originally published during her lifetime, and the significance of this distinction is clear. This book is more balanced, with most if not all of the stories written during a period of Kavan’s life in wartime London following her return from living abroad. While there are a few that stray beyond the more obvious parallels to Kavan’s experience, such as the gothic tale ‘The Brother’ and the horror snapshot ‘The Gannets’, most stories here reflect that distinct time in her life.