Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) was an outstanding writer who dedicated her life to writing a fascinating Journal. 35,000 pages written from the age of 11 years old until she died, a unique accomplishment in the history of literature. This Journal is the very spearhead of her life, an exceptional document about her doubts, her amorous passions, her sexual prowess, but also about her encounters, her friendships, her travels, and sometimes events: the witness of a century.

As an overly excessive woman, she transgressed every conceivable limit in order to achieve her freedom to be and to live as she wished. A bigamist, she was officially married for twelve years to two different men, each unaware of the other’s existence. At the age of 30, she experienced a week of consensual incest with her father who will then find it very difficult to come to terms with it. At the age of 40, she wrote erotic stories under a pseudonym. The mistress of many lovers, from Henry Miller to Antonin Artaud and her psychoanalysts, she has broken all the rules of bourgeois morality and resorted to permanent lies in order to avoid betraying her secrets.

So who was Anaïs Nin? A mythomaniac, an erotomaniac, a disgraceful person? Or a modern woman, uninhibited, ahead of her time, constantly in search of adventure and independence, someone who had asserted herself in a world made for men? Whatever she was, Anaïs Nin became a symbol of women’s sexual liberation in the 20th century, an icon of feminism whose destiny remains fascinating.