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    Sleep Has His House
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    Sleep Has His House
    Unavailable
    Sleep Has His House
    Ebook171 pages3 hours

    Sleep Has His House

    By Anna Kavan

    3/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    largely autobiographical account of an unhappy childhood, Sleep Has His House startled with its strangeness in 1948. Today it is one of Anna Kavan's most acclaimed books. A daring synthesis of memoir and surrealist experimentation, Sleep Has His House charts chronologically the stages of the subject's gradual withdrawal from all interest in and contact with the daylight world of received reality. Brief flashes of daily experience from childhood, adolescence and youth are described in what Kavan terms 'nighttime language' — a heightened, decorative prose that frees these events from their gloomy associations. The novel suggests we have all spoken this dialect in childhood and in our dreams, but these thoughts can only be sharpened, or decoded by contemplation in the dark. Anna Kavan maintained that the plot of a book is only the point of departure, beyond which she tries to reveal that side of life which is never seen by the waking eye, but which dreams and drugs can suddenly illuminate. She spent the last ten years of her life literally and metaphorically shutting out the light; the startling discovery of Sleep has His House is how much these nighttime illuminations reveal her joy for the living world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPeter Owen Publishers
    Release dateJan 8, 2014
    ISBN9780720617122
    Unavailable
    Sleep Has His House

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    Reviews for Sleep Has His House

    3/5

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    • 2/5
      This wasn't an easy read. At times I got utterly lost as to what was happening in the dream sequences & often couldn't find their meaning. I think these sequences serve to illustrate her state of mind during various parts of her life, a biography of feelings rather than details. But, regardless of the fact that she was a very talented writer, I felt most of the time like I was wading through random prose which really amounted to nothing & made little sense. I don't suppose the fact she was a long term heroin addict helped translate her ideas to those of us not so illuminated, or maybe the fact I'm not a fan of fantasy just made it too hard for me to penetrate. As I said, she was very talented as a writer, & I did like the approach in theory. But I just felt I was reading purely to get to the end, & at times read whole chunks without digesting any of it. I preferred her more structured work.
    • 4/5
      Raw, tough, and compelling.