Reading Anaïs Nin : Laboratory of the Soul and Body (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-century Literature)

This volume aims to reread, reevaluate, and recreate Anaïs Nin as a writer. In so doing, it draws on the wealth of Japanese critique of Nin, notable for its distinctive tendency to approach both her life and work with a non-judgmental attitude. The study focuses on Nin in the 1930s when she lived in Paris, her birthplace and “second home,” in Gertrude Stein’s terminology, where she experienced numerous transformative encounters and underwent a radical process of becoming—a Deleuzean concept which plays a pivotal role in this discussion of Nin. While situating Nin within the vibrant cultural and historical context of Paris in the 1930s—one of the most magnetic cities and eras, respectively—the book reads Nin’s text and Nin as text minutely, and presents her as an avant-garde experimentalist as a writer, person, and woman.