A dazzling and haunting vision of the end of the world, Ice is a
masterpiece of literary science fiction now in a new 50th anniversary
edition with a foreword by Jonathan Lethem
One might become convinced that Kavan had seen the future . . . A half
century after its first appearance, Kavan's fever dream of a novel is
beginning to seem all too real. -The New Yorker
In a frozen, apocalyptic landscape, destruction abounds: great walls of
ice overrun the world and secretive governments vie for control. Against
this surreal, yet eerily familiar broken world, an unnamed narrator
embarks on a hallucinatory quest for a strange and elusive "glass-girl"
with silver hair. He crosses icy seas and frozen plains, searching
ruined towns and ransacked rooms, all to free her from the grips of a
tyrant known only as the warden and save her before the ice closes all
around. A novel unlike any other, Ice is at once a dystopian adventure
shattering the conventions of science fiction, a prescient warning of
climate change and totalitarianism, a feminist exploration of violence
and trauma, a Kafkaesque literary dreamscape, and a brilliant allegory
for its author's struggles with addiction--all crystallized in prose
glittering as the piling snow.
Kavan's 1967 novel has built a reputation as an extraordinary and
innovative work of literature, garnering acclaim from China Miéville,
Patti Smith, J. G. Ballard, Anaïs Nin, and Doris Lessing, among others.
With echoes of dystopian classics like Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of
Heaven, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and J. G. Ballard's High
Rise, Ice is a necessary and unforgettable addition to the canon of
science fiction classics.
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
"There is nothing else like it." --Doris Lessing
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of
classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800
titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works
throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the
series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and
notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as
up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
