Mirages opens at the dawn of World War II, when Anai s Nin fled Paris, where she lived for fifteen years with her husband, banker Hugh Guiler, and ends in 1947 when she meets the man who would be "the One," the lover who would satisfy her insatiable hunger for connection. In the middle looms a period Nin describes as "hell," during which she experiences a kind of erotic madness, a delirium that fuels her search for love. As a child suffering abandonment by her father, Anai s wrote, "Close your eyes to the ugly things," and, against a horrifying backdrop of war and death, Nin combats the world's