The case of Anna Kavan

Anna Kavan died in 1968 aged sixty-seven, a victim of the heroin to which she had been addicted for the last thirty years of her life. Yet she was a prolific writer and an accomplished painter. Her literary work, widely acclaimed, has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish and Japanese. She was born in Cannes of English parents and spent her childhood in Europe, California and England. Her life was haunted by a rich, glamorous mother, beside whom her father remains an indistinct figure. Twice married and divorced, she began writing while living with her first husband in Burma. To separate fact from fantasy is a near-impossible task for her biographer, since Anna Kavan destroyed most of her personal correspondence and all of her diaries save those covering an eighteen-month period. Even these she doctored and falsified: 'I was about to become the world's best-kept secret; one that would never be told. What a thrilling enigma for posterity I should be,' she wrote in an unpublished story. D. A. Callard has made a fine, sensitive and illuminating attempt to unravel the enigma.