Anaïs Nin at the Grand Guignol

''Levy's disquieting erotic imagery masterfully evokes Nin's original prose. This sensual confection will enthrall readers looking for an intimate, disturbing thrill.'' -- Publishers Weekly, Starred ReviewWritten as a lost volume from her celebrated diaries, ANAÏS NIN AT THE GRAND GUIGNOL follows the iconic feminist author into an erotic and twilit realm of dark fantasy and sexual obsession, a world of forbidden desire and deadly consequence from which she might never fully return. Paris, 1933. In the aftermath of her love triangle with novelist Henry Miller and his dancer wife June, thirty-year-old Anaïs Nin is left reeling. Stifled by her bourgeois marriage, she retreats into the midnight world of the Grand Guignol, the legendary theatre of horror and fear whose devoted patrons thrill at the macabre spectacles depicted on the black box stage. It is there that she falls under the spell of the actress Paula Maxa, known as The Most Murdered Woman of All Time, who awakens Anaïs to a secret realm of bewitchment and vice, of pleasure and pain. Only Maxa already belongs to Monsieur Guillard, the lustful night creature that haunts the dark streets of Pigalle. As the demon lover's insatiable hunger grows stronger by the hour, Anaïs finds herself trapped in a far more dangerous triangle, a cat-and-mouse game with Maxa's very soul as the ultimate prize.

About the Author

Robert Levy is the author of unsettling stories and plays whose work has been seen Off-Broadway. A Harvard graduate subsequently trained as a forensic psychologist, his work has been called "frank and funny" (Time Magazine), "idiosyncratic and disarming" (The New York Times), "ambitious and clever" (Variety), "smart" (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) and "bloody brave" (the UK's SFX Magazine). His first novel, the contemporary dark fairy tale The Glittering World, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award as well as the Shirley Jackson Award. Robert currently lives in his native Brooklyn near a toxic canal, where he is awaiting his mutant powers to develop any day now. He teaches at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing.

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