The Stone Door [Leonora Carrington]

[Surreal] [GOAT] [Fiction]

The Stone Door

Leonora Carrington

NYRB, NY. 2025. Modern reprint of this classic. New stock.

From the publisher:

The Stone Door is an omen, an incantation, and an adventure story rolled into one. Built in layers like a puzzle box, it is the tale of two people, of love and the Zodiac and the Kabbalah, of Transylvania and Mesopotamia converging at the Caucasus, of a mad Hungarian King named Böles Kilary and of a woman’s discovery of an initiatory code that leads to a Cyclopean obstacle, to love, self, and awareness, to the great stone door of Kescke and beyond.

Written at the end of World War II but not published until 1977 and long unavailable, The Stone Door is at once a celebration of the union of the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington and her husband, the Hungarian-born photographer Chiki Weisz, and an argument for the unification of the male and the female as a means of liberating the human race."

An amazing work, widely available for the first time. A full hearted recommendation on this one. You won't regret it and it's a pretty quick read.