Cities of the Interior

This new authoritative edition of Anais Nin's "continuous novel" contains the author's introduction to the collection and each of the five novels therein, character descriptions, publishing history, and an author's chronology.

The five novels Anais Nin called her "roman fleuve" are chronologically collected in Cities of the Interior: Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, The Four-Chambered Heart, A Spy in the House of Love, and Seduction of the Minotaur. This new authoritative edition contains and introduction by Anais Nin, character descriptions, publishing history, and an author's chronology.

Written primarily in the 1940s and 1950s, these novels were reflections and extensions of what she could not share with the public: her secret diaries, which were filled with the sort of exploits, should her husband have read them, that would have destroyed her marriage. Using spare but powerful prose, Nin reveals a psychological truth about women and relationships that goes beyond the personal and into the universal, providing a "mirror" in which readers can see clearly see aspects of their own selves.