Delta Of Venus

Book excerpt: From influential feminist artist and essayist Anais Nin, Delta of Venus is one of the most important works of modern female erotica and "a joyous display of the erotic imagination" (The New York Times Book Review). Anais Nin pens a lush, magical world where the characters of her imagination possess the most universal of desires and exceptional of talents. Among these provocative stories, a Hungarian adventurer seduces wealthy women then vanishes with their money; a veiled woman selects strangers from a chic restaurant for private trysts; and a Parisian hatmaker named Mathilde leaves her husband for the opium dens of Peru. This is an extraordinarily rich and exotic collection from a master of erotic writing. "Inventive, sophisticated . . . highly elegant naughtiness."—Cosmopolitan