Described by Brian Aldiss as "De Quincey's heir and Kafka's sister,"
junkie, depressive, radical, enigma, cult figure, genre-bending
experimental writer and artist--few women writers have gathered the same
air of mystique, so often the preserve of male counter-culture figures,
as Helen Woods, more commonly known by her adopted pen name and persona:
Anna Kavan. This anthology of Anna Kavan's short fiction and journalism
marks the 50 years since her death in 1968, offering an accessible
introduction to readers new to her work and a timely survey of her
diverse literary talents for her fans. From moving portraits of clinical
depression to phantasmagoric visions of science-fiction wonder, the
selection is taken from across Kavan's oeuvre, representing the best of
her writing and showing the range of her style. Readers will encounter
oblique and elegiac tales of breakdown and incarceration from Asylum
Piece (1940), moving evocations of wartime from I Am Lazarus (1945),
fantastic and surrealist pieces from A Bright Green Field (1958) and
stories of heroin addiction from Julia and the Bazooka (1970). Her
science-fiction stories will appeal to fans of her final novel Ice,
while the previously unpublished 'Starting a Career' is a futuristic
spy-thriller. Writing for the magazine Horizon between 1943 and 1946,
Kavan revealed her personal and political views. She was pacifist,
nihilist, atheist and vehemently anti-fascist; she implicitly believed
in people's mutual responsibility for one another and was preoccupied
with those who were dispossessed, marginalized or alone. Her book
reviews reveal something of her literary tastes and influences as well
as being a platform for her beliefs regarding psychology, ethics and the
importance of art and literature in turbulent times. Machines in the
Head shows the extraordinary range of Kavan's work, which is, by turns,
moving, funny, bizarre, poignant, often unsettling but always
distinctive and unique.
