In 1931 Paris, the French-Cuban diarist Anaïs Nin met the struggling American expatriate writer Henry Miller, embarking on a passionate, highly uninhibited sexual and intellectual love affair. Nin financially subsidized Miller's bohemian lifestyle and introduced him to surrealism, psychoanalysis, and the European avant-garde, while simultaneously engaging in a complex relationship with Miller's charismatic wife, June. This bohemian collision occurred against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the gathering storm of fascism in Europe.

This intense relationship directly facilitated the publication of Miller's controversial, landmark modernist novel 'Tropic of Cancer' in 1934, which Nin helped fund and edit. Their mutual liberation broke rigid literary taboos regarding eroticism, profoundly expanding the psychological depth of mid-century prose-poetry, confessional journals, and avant-garde literature.