'One of the most extraordinary and unconventional writers of this century' - The New York Times Book Review
Anaïs Nin's ground-breaking erotic writings contain striking revelations of sexuality and women's inner lives. Each of the thirteen short stories in Little Birds captures a moment of sexual awakening, recognition or fulfilment, and reveals the subtle or explicit means by which men and women are aroused. Lust, obsession, fantasy and desire emerge as central to the human condition, as pure or as complex as any other of its aspects.
Anaïs Nin (1903-77), born in Paris, was the daughter of a Franco-Danish singer and a Cuban pianist. Her first book - a defence of D. H. Lawrence - was published in the 1930s. Her prose poem, House of Incest (1936) was followed by the collection of three novellas, collected as Winter of Artifice (1939). In the 1940s she began to write erotica for an anonymous client, and these pieces are collected in Delta of Venus and Little Birds (both published posthumously). During her later years Anaïs Nin lectured frequently at universities throughout the USA, in 1974 and was elected to the United States National Institute of Arts and Letters.
If you enjoyed Little Birds, you might like Nin's Delta of Venus, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
