Black Venus

　　Extraordinary and diverse people inhabit this rich, ripe, occasionally raucous collection of short stories. Some are based on real people - Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire's handsome and reluctant muse who never asked to be called the Black Venus, trapped in the terminal ennui of the poet's passion, snatching at a little lifesaving respectability against all odds...Edgar Allen Poe, with his face of a actor, demonstrating in every thought and deed how right his friends were when they said 'No man is safe who drinks before breakfast.'

　　And some of these people are totally imaginary. Such as the seventeenth century whore, transported to Virginia for thieving, who turns into a good woman in spite of herself among the Indians, who have nothing worth stealing. And a girl, suckled by wolves, strange and indifferent as nature, who will not tolerate returning to humanity.

　　Angela Carter wonderfully mingles history, fiction, invention, literary criticism, high drama and low comedy in a glorious collection of stories as full of contradictions and surprises as life itself.
 

作者簡介

安潔拉．卡特（Angela Carter，1940-1992）

　　出生於英國伊斯特本（Eastbourne），是英國最具獨創性的作家之一，書寫風格混雜魔幻寫實、歌德式、女性主義。卡特著有八部小說：《魔幻玩具鋪》（獲約翰．勒維林．里斯獎）、《數種知覺》（獲桑姆塞．毛姆獎）、《英雄與惡徒》、《愛》、《霍夫曼博士的地獄欲望機器》、《新夏娃的激情》、《馬戲團之夜》、以及《明智的孩子》。三本短篇小說集：《染血的房間》、《煙火：九個世俗故事》、以及《聖人與陌生人》等等。卡特的作品也深受媒體喜愛：短篇小說〈與郎為伴〉和《魔幻玩具鋪》曾拍成電影，《馬戲團之夜》和《明智的孩子》改編成舞台劇於倫敦上演，2006 年更被喻為是安潔拉．卡特年，在英倫掀起一陣卡特熱潮。

　　Angela Carter was born in 1940. She lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965. Her next book, The Magic Toyshop, won the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize and the next, Several Perceptions, the Somerset Maugham Award. She died in February 1992.