Overview

A classic 1960s novel of J.G. Ballard-ian strangeness, from one of Britain's most haunting and unforgettable voices The world is threatened by encroaching ice, creeping down day by day from the polar ice caps. The imminent catastrophe has thrown the world's governments into chaos, and no one knows whether the disaster has an environmental or nuclear cause, or how soon the end will come. One man pursues his sylph-like, silver-haired ex-fiancee ('the girl') as she flees from country to country, away from her husband; away from the malevolent 'warden' of one of the proto-territories that have sprung up as traditional societies crumble; away from him.

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Reviews

Astonishes with poetic brilliance Sunday Telegraph There is nothing else like it... This ice is not psychological or metaphysical ice; here the loneliness of childhood has been magicked into a physical reality as hallucinatory as the Ancient Mariner's. -- Doris Lessing 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 -- J. G. Ballard 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 Brutal, addictive and extremely entertaining... strange, unsettling and harsh Guardian Serious, evocative and surprising, unique in its obsessive images of encroachment -- Christopher Priest

Author Information

Anna Kavan was born in 1901, the only child of a wealthy British family. She began publishing under her married name, Helen Ferguson. During this time, she was introduced to heroin by her tennis coach in order to improve her game. She suffered a breakdown after the end of her second marriage, and was committed to an institution to treat both her depression and her addiction. She published her two best-known novels after this experience, Asylum Piece and Ice, under 'Anna Kavan', the name of a character in an earlier novel. She died of heart failure at her home in London in 1968.

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