Unica Zurn – Dark Spring

This dark, autobiographical coming-of-age novel reads more like an exorcism than a memoir

In Dark Spring, author Unica Zürn traces the roots of her obsessions: The exotic father she idealized, the impure mother she detested, the masochistic fantasies and onanistic rituals which she said described the erotic life of a little girl based on my own childhood. Dark Spring is the story of a young girl’s simultaneous introduction to sexuality and mental illness, revealing a different aspect of the mad love so romanticized by the (predominantly male) Surrealists.