The Stone Door, Leonora Carrington
The Stone Door, Leonora Carrington
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The Stone Door

Author: Leonora Carrington

Narrator: Lorna Bennett

Unabridged: 3 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/22/2025


Synopsis

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.

About Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was a key figure in the Surrealist movement and an artist of remarkable individuality. She was born to a wealthy English family in 1917, expelled from two convents as a girl, and presented to the king's court in 1933. Four years later, she ran off with Max Ernst and became a darling of the art world in Paris: serving guests hair omelets at one party, arriving naked to another. After Ernst was taken from their home to a Nazi internment camp in 1940, Carrington fled France. Nearly mad with grief and terror, she was thrown into a lunatic asylum in Spain, and, after escaping, married a Mexican diplomat, fleeing Europe for New York City then Mexico City, where she lived for the rest of her life. Throughout her long career, Carrington published novels, stories, and plays, in addition to making paintings, sculptures, and tapestries.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jack on July 22, 2025

(Cover of the just-released NYRB edition, with art by Carrington herself.) This weird esoteric novella of dreams within dreams, occult magick, alchemy, divination, visions, and timey wimey shenanigans was nearly impossible for me to decipher, even though I was already familiar with the story thanks t......more

Goodreads review by Bill on September 01, 2025

I'm not on my surrealist fiction a game here; I had a little trouble with the earlier sections with the multiply framed and nested narratives, and only hit my stride when the story coalesced around Zacharias and his travails and quest. But there's no shortage of elegantly rendered bizarre vignettes......more

Goodreads review by Matt on September 02, 2025

As much for the soul as it is for the mind. Much like her works of art it does not require understanding to appreciate its inherent wisdom and beauty.......more

Goodreads review by Diana on September 07, 2025

3.5 ⭐️ absolutely fascinating and imaginative. I’ve never read anything like it.......more

Goodreads review by Renee on August 15, 2025

Interesting as a document of its time and of surrealist literature, with some beautifully evocative passages. However, it is a bit *too* of its time to recommend for general readers. I will probably read it again as a physical book, which I expect will help me get more out of it.......more