Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

Nightwood

By

  • Genre Literary Fiction
  • Publisher New Directions Publishing
  • Released
  • Length 224 Pages

Description

Nightwood is a modernist classic renowned for its haunting prose and daring exploration of love, desire, and despair. Set mainly in Paris during the interwar years, the novel traces the tangled lives of expatriates, aristocrats, and outcasts drawn into the destructive orbit of Robin Vote, a magnetic yet elusive woman whose presence devastates those who love her. Told through fragmented, poetic language and suffused with atmosphere, Nightwood explores themes of passion, identity, and alienation. It portrays the struggles of characters caught between societal conventions and forbidden desires, making it one of the earliest novels to deal openly with same-sex relationships. With its dense, lyrical style and psychological depth, the book has been praised by contemporaries like T.S. Eliot and remains a touchstone of queer literature and modernist experimentation.

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