Ladders to Fire

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Anaïs Nin’s Ladders to Fire interweaves the stories of several emotionally inhibited women grappling with self-doubt, fear, guilt, and distrust. The novel delves into their inner struggles to break free from these barriers to happiness and wholeness. Drawing from her own experiences documented in her renowned diaries, Nin's intuitive and experimental style transforms personal reflections into fiction. She famously stated, “it was the fiction writer who edited the diary.” The narrative explores the erotic attachments of four young women, framed as a "woman's struggle to understand her own nature." This work initiates a five-volume "continuous novel," Cities of the Interior, which includes Children of the Albatross, The Four-Chambered Heart, A Spy in the House of Love, and Solar Barque. Set in pre-war, expatriate Paris, the novel, which shocked Nin’s contemporaries, is inspired by her confessional diaries. Although Nin found profound self-creation in her diaries, she refrained from revealing them during her lifetime, opting instead for fiction as a means to artistically distill her secret experiences. The 1995 reissue features a new cover and foreword, along with an introduction by Nin scholar Benjamin Franklin V and Gunther Stuhlmann’s classic foreword.