Ice

Description

‘A strange and compelling classic of dystopian and climate fiction, one that with foreboding and deep compassion maps the psyche and the terrain of dislocation’ – Jeff VanderMeer

‘One might become convinced that Kavan had seen the future’ – New Yorker

Ice will soon cover the entire globe. As the glacial tide creeps forward, society breaks down. Hurtling through the frozen chaos is a nameless narrator, seeking the white-haired girl he once loved, desperate to rescue her – or perhaps to annihilate her. Through nightmarish, ever-shifting scenes, she flees him and his powerful enemy, the Warden. But none of them can outrun the ice.

Anna Kavan’s masterwork is an apocalyptic vision of environmental devastation and possessive violence, rendered in unforgettable, propulsive, hallucinatory prose.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

With an introduction by Christopher Priest, author of The Prestige and The Inverted World.

Anna Kavan (1901-1968) was born Helen Woods, the only child of wealthy British expatriates, and grew up travelling through Europe and America. She began publishing under her married name, Helen Ferguson, having left her husband in Burma and returned with her son to live in England. After a mental breakdown in the 1930s she began writing under a new name, taken from one of her characters, and with a new style. She continued writing for another three decades, while frequently using heroin and undergoing several rounds of psychiatric hospitalisation. She died shortly after the publication of Ice, her most celebrated work.