Asylum Piece and Other Stories

Book excerpt: "This collection of stories, mostly interlinked and largely autobiographical, chart the descent of the narrator from the onset of neurosis to final incarceration at a Swiss clinic. The sense of paranoia, of persecution by a foe or force that is never given a name evokes The Trial by Franz Kafka, the writer with whom Kavan is most often compared, though Kavan's deeply personal, restrained and almost foreign-accented style has no true model. The same characters who recur throughout -- the protagonist's unhelpful 'advisor', the friend/lover who abandons her at the clinic, and an assortment of deluded companions -- are sketched without a trace of the rage, self-pity or sentiment that have marked more recent prozac memoirs." -- From publisher's website.