A collection of
erotic writings by Anais Nin, including MARRIANE - The most autobiographical of the stories given that Nin wrote her stories for a mysterious figure called only The Collector. Here, The Collector sends her to a girl who can edit the work for her, and the narrator finds out that the girl has written her own story, inspired by what she has read. The girl is virginal, and also an artist. She is involved with a
man who pays her to paint him naked, but never lets her touch him, causing her intense
sexual anxiety. MANUEL is a
flasher who is danger of being arrested. He gets work for one woman who pays him by looking at his genitalia when he drops his trousers. He eventually meets a female equivalent to himself, and they go away happy to flash their private parts at each other. LINDA tells of a woman in a very open marriage, who told by her hair-dresser that she ought to meet
men who treat her badly in order to more appreciate the men who treat her well, meets up with a man who refuses to have sex with her, but who is willing to make
love to a handkerchief she has wiped her genitalia with. He does this right under her nose. MARCEL tells of an insecure man, who lacks self-confidence, gaining sexual education from the narrator and visiting can-can clubs, but the decadent beautiful free-love world is soon to be shattered by the impending Nazi occupation, and everyone senses it. THE VEILED WOMAN – A man is offered a chance to earn money making love to a beautiful rich stranger, though he will never be allowed to know her identity. He accepts the offer and gets taken blindfolded to a fantastic and profitable sexual encounter. Months later, by chance he learns that she also invited men to watch him in action. He is left paranoid that all of his sexual encounters may have been secretly watched. ELANA – Elana has read D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and feels as if her own love life is bland by comparison. A gay man, who will make love to her only up to a point, as he harbours a phobia about women’s vaginas, then seduces her. She also has an affair with Pierre, a fugitive anarchist, who is on the run for crimes against the state. Elana also experiments with lesbianism. She has so much
Sex without love that she feels hardened and immune, comparing herself to someone walking on hot coals without burning her feet. She knows that Pierre will move on out of her life, but she is content to make love to him before that day comes. PIERRE – The anarchist who appears in Elana has aback story of his own, in which his sexual awakening involved the necrophiling of a woman’s body rescued from a quayside. Chased and almost captured, Pierre receives a slow sexual education from other women but he remains haunted by his crime. Undoubtedly one of the best and most important works of erotica from the 20th century.
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