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  • Published: 15 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781681378947
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 136
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

The Stone Door




Ancient Mesopotamia, the Zodiac, and the land of the dead feature in this wildly surrealistic adventure story—Leonora Carrington’s revolutionary second novel, long out of print.

Ancient Mesopotamia, the Zodiac, and the land of the dead feature in this wildly surrealistic adventure story—Leonora Carrington’s revolutionary second novel, long out of print.

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 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.

  • Published: 15 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781681378947
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 136
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

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Praise for The Stone Door

”[Carrington’s] work with its vibrant dehumanized animals, its mythic universality, and mysterious lucidity remains a marvel. She was and remains forever rad.” —Joy Williams, Book Post

“The magically unfolding fable tells of Zacharias, a twentieth-century Hungarian Jew who is destined to voyage beyond the boundaries of time to the shores of ancient Mesopotamia, and open the great stone door of the mountain Kescke to release his true love. This modern fairy tale burns with passion and purpose.” —Publishers Weekly