Angela Carter’s complex work earned her a number of labels in criticism. Many of her critics, like Susan R. Suleiman, discuss her role as a subversive postmodernist critic of Western culture. Aiden Day characterizes her from a somewhat different aspect, as an outstanding “magic realist” author (Day 2). Besides the cultural critique and postmodernism, feminism and gender aspects are in the focus of most studies devoted to Carter’s fiction. Alison Easton and Sally Robinson interpret her work as the subversion of the conventional sexual paradigm. Walter Kendrick reads her as transgressor in fictional representation. Ricarda Smith emphasizes that many of Carter’s novels use “the device of a journey, the traditional symbol of a quest” in fantastic settings to mediate “a discussion of the making of the subject in the light of philosophical, psychoanalytical, and feminist ideas” (Smith 56). In my essay I aim to focus particularly on an aspect that is often mentioned in Carter criticism but only very rarely constitutes the central focus of analyses. I shall discuss Angela Carter’s 1972 novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman as a work which was born out of its author’s interest in surrealism.