The dream encroached upon Anna Kavan's reality with such power as to submerge her ego. Yet, as Anaïs Nin has suggested in her introduction [to Neige suivi de mal aimées], Kavan's inner meanderings so unflinchingly delineated demonstrate an act of courage, even heroism.

Neige is an esthetic, psychological and metaphysical probing. In a series of exciting metaphors and disemboweled images the author reveals her own divided and tortured soul: iced, congealed, hard, brittle, white, as pure and as prismatic as crystal. The theme: a faceless and identity-less man longs for and is bedazzled by a beautiful, ethereal, silvery being, an anima figure,… whom he meets one summer evening in some spaceless area. She stands aloof and impervious in her icy frigidity to his inner cravings. His repeated attempts to liberate himself from this haunting being are to no avail. As he slowly succumbs to her impassible...