Quiet Days in Clichy

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'Here, even if I had a thousand dollar in my pocket, I know of no sight which could arouse in me the feeling of ecstasy' 
 
Looking back to Henry Miller's bohemian life in 1930s Paris, when he was an obscure, penniless writer, Quiet Days in Clichy is a love letter to a city. As he describes nocturnal wanderings through shabby Montmartre streets, cafés and bars, sexual liaisons and volatile love affairs, Miller brilliantly evokes a period that would shape his entire life and oeuvre. 
 
'His writing is flamboyant, torrential, chaotic, treacherous, and dangerous' Anaïs Nin

Henry Miller (1891-1980) is one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. His best-known novels include Tropic of Cancer (1934), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), and the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (Sexus, 1949, Plexus, 1953, and Nexus, 1959), all published in France and banned in the US and the UK until 1964. He is widely recognised as an irreverent, risk-taking writer who redefined the novel and made the link between the European avant-garde and the American Beat generation.

The Colossus of Maroussi

'Out of the sea, as if Homer himself had arranged it for me, the islands bobbed up, lonely, deserted, mysterious in the fading light' 
 
Enraptured by a young woman's account of the landscapes of Greece, Henry Miller set off to explore the Grecian countryside with his friend Lawrence Durrell in 1939. In The Colossus of Maroussi he describes drinking from sacred springs, nearly being trampled to death by sheep and encountering the flamboyant Greek poet Katsumbalis, who 'could galvanize the dead with his talk'. This lyrical classic of travel writing represented an epiphany in Miller's life, and is the book he would later cite as his favourite. 
 
'One of the five greatest travel books of all time' Pico Iyer

Nexus

Nexus is the third volume of the scandalous trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, Henry Miller's major life work 
 
The exhilarating final volume of Henry Miller's semi-autobiographical trilogy, Nexus follows his last months in New York. Trapped in a bizarre ménage-à-trois with his fiery wife Mona and her lover Stasia, he finds his life descending into chaos. Finally, betrayed and exhausted, he decides to leave America and sail for Paris, to discover his true vocation as a writer.

The last volume of The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, Nexus continues the story of Henry Miller's escapades and quest for freedom. Feeling trapped in Brooklyn and his marriage with the volatile Mona, he becomes more interested in her extravagant friend, Stasia. After a complicated ménage à trois with Mona and Stasia, he is abandoned by both women and decides to sail for Paris to begin his resurrection as a writer. Funny and shocking, erotic and philosophical, the trilogy tells, according to Miller, 'the story of the most tragic suffering any man had endured'.

Sexus

Sexus is the first volume of the scandalous trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, Henry Miller's major life work 
 
Henry Miller called the end of his life in America and the start of a new, bohemian existence in 1930s Paris his 'rosy crucifixion'. His searing fictionalized autobiography of this time of liberation was banned for nearly twenty years. Sexus, the first volume in The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, looks back to his early sexual escapades in Brooklyn, and his growing infatuation with the playful, teasing dance hall hostess who will become the great obsession of his life.

The first novel in the autobiographical Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, Sexus depicts Miller's first stormy marriage and his sexual escapades in New York City with the mysterious dance hall hostess Mona. Published in 1949 in Paris, this picaresque tale was banned in the US and the UK for two decades. Funny and shocking, erotic and philosophical, the trilogy tells, according to Miller, 'the story of the most tragic suffering any man had endured'.

Plexus

Plexus is the second volume of the scandalous trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, Henry Miller's major life work 
 
Exploring one man's desperate desire for freedom, Plexus is the central volume of Henry Miller's scandalous semi-autobiographical trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion. It finds him in the midst of his stormy marriage to the volatile, duplicitous Mona, and joyfully quitting his dreary job for a hand-to-mouth existence in Brooklyn, as he takes his first steps towards becoming a writer.

The second volume of The Rosy Crucifixion, Plexus is the core of the trilogy, the audacious story of a man looking for freedom and the true life of the spirit. It finds the young Henry Miller in the midst of his second tumultuous marriage with the dance hall hostess Mona, as he is constantly challenged by her volatile personality, and takes readers back to his childhood in early 20th-century Brooklyn as well as his first attempts at becoming a writer. Funny and shocking, erotic and philosophical, the trilogy tells, according to Miller, 'the story of the most tragic suffering any man had endured'.

Tropic of Cancer

Shocking, banned and the subject of obscenity trials, Henry Miller's first novel Tropic of Cancer is one of the most scandalous and influential books of the twentieth century -- new to Penguin Modern Classics with a cover by Tracey Emin 
 
Tropic of Cancer redefined the novel. Set in Paris in the 1930s, it features a starving American writer who lives a bohemian life among prostitutes, pimps, and artists. Banned in the US and the UK for more than thirty years because it was considered pornographic, Tropic of Cancer continued to be distributed in France and smuggled into other countries. When it was first published in the US in 1961, it led to more than 60 obscenity trials until a historic ruling by the Supreme Court defined it as a work of literature. Long hailed as a truly liberating book, daring and uncompromising, Tropic of Cancer is a cornerstone of modern literature that asks us to reconsider everything we know about art, freedom, and morality. 
 
'At last an unprintable book that is fit to read' Ezra Pound 
 
'A momentous event in the history of modern writing' Samuel Beckett 
 
'The book that forever changed the way American literature would be written' Erica Jong

At last an unprintable book that is fit to read

A momentous event in the history of modern writing

One of the ten or twenty great novels of our century, a revolution in consciousness equal to The Sun Also Rises

Read him for five pages, ten pages, and you feel the peculiar relief that comes not so much from understanding as from being understood. 'He knows all about me,' you feel; 'he wrote this especially for me'. It is as though you could hear a voice speaking to you, a friendly American voice, with no humbug in it, no moral purpose, merely an implicit assumption that we are all alike

Henry Miller

Books by Henry Miller

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