A largely autobiographical account of an unhappy childhood Sleep Has his House startled with its strangeness in 1948 Today it is one of Anna Kavan's most acclaimed books A daring synthesis of memoir & surrealist experimentation Sleep Has His House charts chronologically the stages of the subject's gradual withdrawal from all interest in & contact with the daylight world of received reality Brief flashes of daily experience from childhood adolescence & youth are described in what Kavan terms 'night-time language'
- a heightened decorative prose that frees these events from their gloomy associations The novel suggests we have all spoken this dialect in childhood & in our dreams but these thoughts can only be sharpened or decoded by contemplation in the dark Anna Kavan maintained that the plot of a book is only the point of departure beyond which she tries to reveal that side of life which is never seen by the waking eye but which dreams & drugs can suddenly illuminate She spent the last ten years of her life literally & metaphorically shutting out the light; the startling discovery of Sleep Has His House is how much these night-time illuminations reveal her joy for the living world