HOUSE OF MIST.

New York:: Farrar, Straus,, 1947.. Hardcover first edition -. Near fine in a a good dustjacket. (upper corner of dj flap clipped, but price present in lower corner, some toning, large chip to lower edge of front cover) . First printing. The first novel by perhaps the most influential Latin American woman writer of the early 20th century. Originally published as 'La Ultima Niebla' in Argentina in 1934 (where she had fled in 1933 after a failed suicide attempt and an attempt to shoot her husband, and where she met and became friends with Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges), this was rewritten by the author in English for this edition (at the time of publication in the US, she was living in New York.) Her books, with their mingling of fantasy, realism and surrealism are considered precursors of the magical realism in Latin American literature. In her prologue to this novel, she writes: 'I wish to inform the reader that even though this is a mystery, it is a mystery without murder. He will not find here any corpse, any detective; he will not even find a murder trial, for the simple reason that there will be no murderer. There will be no murderer and no murder, yet there will be . . . crime. And there will be fear. Those for whom fear has an attraction; those who are interested in the mysterious life people live in their dreams during sleep; those who believe that the dead are not really dead; those who are afraid of the fog and of their own hearts. . . they will perhaps enjoy going back to the early days of this century and entering into the strange house of mist that a young woman, very much like all other women, built for herself at the southern end of South America.' Cover praise from Neruda and Borges (who called her work 'Stories of melancholy magic.') and others. Listed both in Hubin and in Bleiler Fantastic Literature. Striking dust jacket art by George Salter. 245 pp.