Join a book club that is reading The Stone Door (New York Review Books: Classics)!

NYRB Classics monthly subscription meetup - Chicago

Are you a subscriber to the The New York Review of Books Classics Book Club? If you enjoy getting your monthly mystery book in the mail, come share what you thought of it at an in-person meet up.

The Stone Door (New York Review Books: Classics)

Ancient Mesopotamia, the Zodiac, and the land of the dead feature in this wildly surrealistic adventure story—Leonora Carrington’s revolutionary first 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 the surrealist painter Leonora 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.

BUY THE BOOK

Published Jul 22, 2025

144 pages

Not yet rated

Community Reviews

See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.