Ice

(Paperback)

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Description

This classic of feminist science fiction centres on the hunt for a white-haired girl, through a frozen, post-apocalyptic landscapeIce 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 Kavans masterwork is an apocalyptic vision of environmental devastation and possessive violence, rendered in unforgettable, propulsive, hallucinatory prose.

Reviews

'There is nothing else like it ... This ice is not psychological ice or metaphysical ice; here the loneliness of childhood has been magicked into a physical reality as hallucinatory as the Ancient Mariners.' -

'One of the most mysterious of modern writers, Anna Kavan created a uniquely fascinating, fictional world. Few contemporary novelists could match the intensity of her vision.' -

'One of the most terrifying postulations about the end of the world ... One can only admire the strength and courage of this visionary.' - The Times

'One might become convinced that Kavan had seen the future.' - The New Yorker

'Ice is Kavans best novel: a sustained and extended metaphor for the descent into, and traverse of, the ice-laden world of the addict ... a marvel of descriptive, chilling writing, rich in action and introspection.' -

Author Bio

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.