White Rabbits/Down Below

Playful, sharp and fantatsical: a new selection of writing by Leonora Carrington, the last great Surrealist

In 1940, Leonora Carrington - a twenty-two-year-old British-born Surrealist artist - was persuaded to flee France and the advancing German army for Spain. Already suffering from a psychotic break occasioned by the arrest of her lover by the Nazi authorities, she was soon confined to a mental institution, where she was subjected to sadistic treatment under the guise of medical care. In her memoir, Down Below , she describes her experiences with an anthropologist's precision and an artist's sense of the fantastic.

This volume also includes a selection of Carrington's best stories from across her lifetime, functioning as companion pieces to her surrealist-inflected non-fiction. They include 'The Debutante', in which a young woman, wishing to avoid a ball in her honour, swaps places with a hyena; 'White Rabbits', which sees a friendly neighbour come by to ask for spare decomposing meat; and 'My Flannel Knickers', in which a woman has sainthood forced upon her.

Author: Leonora Carrington

Memoirs, Classic fiction (pre c 1945), Short stories

Published on 9 Jul 2026 by Penguin Books Ltd.