KAVAN, Anna Julia and the Bazooka. London: Peter Owen1970
8vo. Original publishers yellow cloth with gilt title lettering to spine, price-clipped green and black dustwrapper, pp. [iv] 5-13 [+unpaginated], Spine of dustwrapper lightly rubbed with minor staining to rear wrapper; otherwise fine edition.
First UK Edition. Signed by publisher Peter Owen to title page
With an illuminating introduction by close friend Rhys Davies, Julia and the Bazooka is Anna Kavan’s posthumous collection of short stories. Although works such as Asylum Piece (1940) and A Bright Green Field (1958) established Anna Kavan as a writer of profound literary originality, it was only following her death in 1968 that the extent of her contribution was commended.
Eulogised as some of her most autobiographical tales, Julia and the Bazooka is a series of sixteen short stories which reflect the writer’s own existence ‘on the edge’ and her thirty years precarious relationship to life and addiction. There is the voice of a young woman mesmerised by risk to tales of women suffering profound hallucinations and visitations from past lovers…
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