In fact she died of heart failure, though she had attempted suicide several times during her life. She is popularly supposed to have died of a heroin overdose. Kavan made no apologies for her heroin usage. Our first-person narrator, privy to scenes he cannot possibly have attended, tries to stabilize the whole project for both himself and us, his readers (without whom we begin to suspect he cannot exist).

Her addiction has been described as an attempt to self-medicate rather than recreational. Again, Kavan’s novel upends our expectations of how a novel is supposed to work. During this time, Helen also renamed herself Anna Kavan after a character in her own novel Let Me Alone.Īround 1926 Anna became addicted to heroin. The change in her writing style and physical appearance coincided with a mental breakdown. I Am Lazarus (1945), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. These early novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work.

She’s the bulldog breeder, 40-year heroin addict, interior decorator, asylum patient, who had lived around the world and survived the London Blitz. Her initial six works were published under the name of Helen Ferguson, her first married name. Self-portrait by Anna Kavan the pacifist, anti-fascist, writer, artist, who erased her identity and legally changed her name to that of a character in one of her novels (Let me Alone 1930). She began her career writing under her married name Helen Ferguson, publishing six novels.

Anna Kavan was born 'Helen Woods' in France on Apto wealthy expatriate British parents. Anna Kavan (19011968) was born Helen Woods.

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