The House of Sleep
KAVAN, Anna
New York: Doubleday & Company Inc.. 1947.
Description:
First edition. 8vo. 187x125mm. pp. 223 [1bl]. Publishers cloth with original illustrated dustjacket. Some toning to the covers and bumping to head and foot of spine. Jacket chipped along top and bottom edges and some repaired closed tears. Front flap price clipped with some loss of the title on flap. We have found no other copy in the dustjacket and only one copy appears in the auction records (in 2006). The New York edition predates by a year the first UK edition issued as Sleep Has His House.
The House of Sleep has been described as "the most undervalued of Kavan's novels". Most critiques locate Kavan's outsiderdom in her drug addiction and frequent hospitalization for mental health problems. These are more or less interesting biographical details but it is Kavan's neglected status within the canon of experimental modernism that should draw us to her. The House of Sleep has no plot or conventional characters; it plays with traditional notions of narrative and syntax, using collage and cinematic effects to create a sense of dislocation and unease - the world of sleep and dreams.
Description:
First edition. 8vo. 187x125mm. pp. 223 [1bl]. Publishers cloth with original illustrated dustjacket. Some toning to the covers and bumping to head and foot of spine. Jacket chipped along top and bottom edges and some repaired closed tears. Front flap price clipped with some loss of the title on flap. We have found no other copy in the dustjacket and only one copy appears in the auction records (in 2006). The New York edition predates by a year the first UK edition issued as Sleep Has His House.
The House of Sleep has been described as "the most undervalued of Kavan's novels". Most critiques locate Kavan's outsiderdom in her drug addiction and frequent hospitalization for mental health problems. These are more or less interesting biographical details but it is Kavan's neglected status within the canon of experimental modernism that should draw us to her. The House of Sleep has no plot or conventional characters; it plays with traditional notions of narrative and syntax, using collage and cinematic effects to create a sense of dislocation and unease - the world of sleep and dreams.