A Stranger on Earth: The Life and Work of Anna Kavan

This biography of novelist Anna Kavan, draws on newly discovered material about a visionary writer who renamed herself after a character in one of her own novels and did everything she could to resist biography. It documents Kavan's addiction to heroin, her failed marriages, her bond with her psychiatrist, her suicide attempts, her strange, unforgettable paintings, her devotion to gay men, her obsessions, phobias, reclusiveness, and indomitable artistic courage. Of Reed's biographical fiction of the Marquis de Sade, When the Whip Comes Down.