Leonora Carrington, born an Englishwoman, followed Max Ernst to Paris in 1937 as a young art student, where she became part of the Surrealist group as a painter and writer. During the war, she fled to Spain and later to the USA, before finally settling in Mexico. She enjoys a significant reputation as a painter. The writer has been rediscovered in recent years and is considered a "classic" of fantastic literature. Like Lewis Carroll and Flann O’Brien, Leonora Carrington has a growing circle of admirers and connoisseurs.

"Leonora Carrington's novel derives its quiet intensity from that unio mystica of the unusual, which Lautréamont has made into an image in the encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table. It has to do with anarchy and the rebellion of dream and poetry against the omnipotence of logic."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.