My Soul in China: A Novella and Stories

Anna Kavan's novella My Soul in China was written after the failure of her second marriage, containing autobiographical elements, including the experiences of mental breakdown and drug addiction. Its central character, a desperately unhappy woman, find temporary refuge, after the breakdown of her marriage, with an itinerant Australian. Their brief idyllic time together, spent at a lonely coastal retreat, is poignantly described. But when Kay's lover prepares to return to his family, she has once again to face the nightmare fear of mental isolation and loss of personal identity. The nine short stories that make up the whole volume show the author experimenting with new ideas and reflect, sometimes wryly, some of the contemporary problems -violence in society, pollution - that concerned her. All, however, reveal the weird atmosphere of mingled fantasy and reality which distinguished Anna Kavan's work.