Short stories addressing the surreal realities of mental illness, from a British modernist writer often compared to Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf — The tortured life of Anna Kavan yielded much in the way of writing material. Her drug addiction bore fruit in the Julia and the Bazooka collection of stories, while this volume recalls her asylum experiences, continuing in the vein of Asylum Piece, her first book published under the name Anna Kavan. These are powerful, haunting works which can be harrowing but are also full of sympathy.