Who Are You? (Peter Owen Modern Classic) - Softcover

Kavan, Anna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0720611504 ISBN 13: 9780720611502

Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers, 2001

Synopsis

Depicting the hopeless, emotional polarity of a young couple, this novel follows their doomed marriage spent in a remote, tropical hell. She—described only as "the girl"—is young, sophisticated and sensitive. He, "Mr. Dog-Head," is an unreconstructed thug and heavy drinker who rapes his wife, otherwise passing his time bludgeoning rats with a tennis racket. Together with a visiting stranger, "Suede Boots"—who urges the woman to escape until he is banished by her husband—these characters live through the same situations twice. Their identities are equally real—or unreal—in each case. With slight variation in the background and the novel's atmosphere, neither the outcome nor the characters themselves are quite the same the second time. The constant question of the jungle "brain-lever" bird remains unanswered: who are you?

About this title

About the Author

Anna Kavan was one of the greatest unsung enigmas in 20th-century British literature. Born as Helen Ferguson, who lived a fraught childhood and two failed marriages led her to change her name to that of one of her characters. Despite struggling with mental illness and heroin addiction for most of her life, she was still able to write fiction that was as powerful and memorable as any English female writer of the last 150 years.

Edition details

• Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0720611504
• ISBN 13: 9780720611502
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200