Who was Anaïs Nin? To some, she was a towering literary figure, whose late life fame following the publication of her diaries changed the reading habits of a generation. To others, she was a failed novelist, better known for her affair with Henry Miller. Readers might know her best for her dollar-a-page erotica, never intended for publication; or celebrate her for her journals and avant-garde fiction, powerful statements of a woman's right to artistry. Achieving a cult following in the last decade of her life, her reputation took a shocking posthumous knock when she was revealed to be a bigamist, a fantasist, a compulsive liar and an incestuous daughter.

Katherine Rowland's new biography is an unflinching, empathetic account of Nin's life, and a reckoning with her wild legacy. From this book emerges a figure who was a lover, a tyrant, an exploiter, a victim, but above all things, a writer.