Mirages opens at the dawn of World War II, when Ana-Nin fled Paris, where she lived for fifteen years with her husband, banker Hugh Guiler, and ends in 1947 when she meets the man who would be -the One,- the lover who would satisfy her insatiable hunger for connection. In the middle looms a period Nin describes as -hell,- during which she experiences a kind of erotic madness, a delirium that fuels her search for love. As a child suffering abandonment by her father, Ana-wrote, -Close your eyes to the ugly things,- and, against a horrifying backdrop of war and death, Nin combats the world-s darkness with her own search for light.
Mirages collects, for the first time, the story that was cut from all of Nin-s other published diaries, particularly volumes 3 and 4 of The Diary of Ana-Nin, which cover the same time period. It is the long-awaited successor to the previous unexpurgated diaries Henry and June, Incest, Fire, and Nearer the Moon.
