This is an apocalyptic novel that was unfortunately lost on me.

We follow an unnamed narrator as he searches the world for a woman he becomes obsessed with and tries to save her from "The Warden," all while the world is slowly freezing to death.

I had really high hopes for this one as I love apocalyptic stories, but this one really missed the mark for me. Apart from the lack of any plot, I found the narrator really annoying, the obsession over the woman I didn't fully understand. The way the woman had to be described as so skinny she could break about 50 million times also grated on me a lot. We get it, she's weak and vulnerable and needs saving.

The story is a little trippy, and I found myself confused a lot of the time. The narrator tells his story, but I was never quite sure what was facts and what was him hallucinating. I would have liked more from the apocalyptic side and less from this weird obsession with the woman.

I think it was written well, and there was definitely a message in there somewhere, but ultimately, it was just not a book for me as I completely missed the message it was trying to tell.

Many thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read this repub of Kavan's 'Ice' in exchange for an honest review!

One of the most unique modes of storytelling I have encountered in the past year - for lovers of books that eat at you, make your brain hurt, and offer very little resolution.

'Ice' for all its bare, ascetic, and clinical feel, is a story riddled with violence, lust, and torment. I have to say it took me a little while to adjust to Kavan's hallucinatory prose - each time you manage to orient yourself, you are abruptly tugged away into a new, unfamiliar land.

This relentless shifting seems a fundamental part of the text, however. The narrator's restless pursuit of "the girl" allows each character to metamorphosise and shift between different roles, identities, locations.

The prime thread that runs throughout this haziness is the narrator travelling across a fatally icy landscape to find a "girl", in the clutches of a tyrannical general. Each time he locates her in a new environment, she is whisked away again. The times he does manage to secure her, it is always temporary and filled with discomfort - Kavan seems to question the male desire for ownership, especially interesting against the warfare backdrop.

The ice landscape is not static - slowly enveloping all land masses, we constantly feel on the brink of climate collapse. It is a bleak and unforgiving glimpse of the worst of humanity, humanity in crisis.

Kavan fills each section of her novel with dream-like relapses, exploring possibilities of what could have happened, before yanking us disorientedly back into what is actually happening. It becomes very difficult at times to discern what the actual plot of the book is - I think this is the point.

Parts of this were a hard read - the (not so implicit) paedophilic gaze with which we are to take in "the girl" is deeply uncomfortable. There are scenes bursting with currents of sexual aggression and violence that many (female) readers could probably do without - interestingly I think this is saved by the fact that the writer is female herself, otherwise this probably would have been unbearable.

Some wonderful and hypnotic moments that are truly spellbinding, but something didn't quite gel with me to tie this all together.

I first read Ice several years ago, as part of a university module on speculative fiction. Since then, the cryptic, slipstream narrative has stuck with me. This book remains as harsh and unyielding as the ice that encroaches around our unnamed characters, but is for me a sci-fi classic.

The world of ‘Ice’ is on the brink of apocalypse, wrought by both political conflict and environment. Amidst the panic of escaping an all-consuming ice age, we follow the unnamed narrator through ambiguous countries on his hunt for a young woman (‘the girl’ repeatedly called a ‘victim’ too) and through his violent fantasies that bully for the audience the idea that he means to save her from a third character: the Warden. This very conflict between wanting to dominate and to save is embodied by the narrator’s own admission: “With one arm I warmed and supported her: The other arm was the executioner’s”.

Kavan’s prose fools us at first into reading a simple narration of the man’s journey, but like his desires flick between violence and salvation, hallucinatory fantasies are woven between real events. As readers we are constantly forced into reassessing this narrative and decipher where reality lapsed. Almost without fail these instances revolve around the girl, fragile and ghostly. Her physical appearance is repeatedly sketched by the narrator as transparent, extremely delicate, unearthly white, like the snow all around them. Above all, she is a victim, of him and others.

For me, a book of so many layers deserves a much greater fanfare. Similar to the narrator’s dual sense of reality, Ice is both surreal speculative dystopia and a hallucinatory nod to a heroin addict’s own suffering. Re-reading confirmed this as one of my all-time favourite speculative fiction books.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Ice by Anna Kavan is a first person-POV classic climate fiction novel set when the northern hemisphere is slowly becoming covered in ice. When the warden searches for a young woman he is obsessed with, he runs into a secret organization that is governing a small nation as the world falls apart around them. But the warden only wants to find the young woman and will do anything to have her.

Some of what is said about women and survivors of emotional abuse is uncomfortable and even will be triggering for some. I think most of it is what I would expect from something written in the 60s, but it was still a bit shocking at times. There is sexual assault on the page that is unlike anything I’ve read before because it is framed around how the young woman being assaulted has a victim mindset due to her childhood abuse from her mother. The young woman being a victim and living like a victim comes up often. On top of that, the warden never feels like he’s supposed to be a hero or a good guy; it’s pretty obvious on page one that he is selfish and has an obsession and he kind of just watches things happen to the young woman and barely intervenes unless he thinks he can have her for himself.

I mention all of this because I think there are some very cool things in here with atmosphere and imagery and how every character with blue eyes is almost depicted as otherworldly but in a ghastly way. It feels almost prophetic when you look at the current state of the world. But some of the content could be a major turn-off or a reader will need to prepare themselves before diving in. I have no doubt that Anna Kavan was drawing from the world around her as she wrote the book and I do appreciate that she preserved the attitudes of the time so we can see how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.

Content warning for depictions of assault and domestic abuse and mentions of childhood abuse

I would recommend this to fans of climate fiction looking for an early example, readers looking for sci-fi set in a future Earth rather than in space, and those looking for a short classic with speculative elements

The novel doesn't follow a traditional structure with a definite beginning and an end or proper cause and effect to the events depicted in it. With a fragmented narrative that doesn't bother much about linearity, with past events and hallucinations merging without any bifurcation, the plot rolls out like a fever dream. The ambiguity of time, space, and even the identity of characters may alienate readers who are only used to more structured narratives. But to those who don't mind plots that are not anchored and would love to exert themselves in something complex with a scope for multiple interpretations, 'Ice' is a treasure trove.

Terrifying and slippery, propolsive and bewildering, the book unspools like a series of difficult dreams, the narrative constantly shape shifting but yielding the same fable at the center.

I love a surreal 'post apocalyptic' novella discussing climate change and it's now... not so surreal aftermath!!!

this book was published in 1967 and it gives for so much discussion on climate change, surrealism and humanities response to a climate catastrophe. reading this in 2025 was INSANE, I felt my jaw fall to the floor due to how scary MANY of the societal attitudes and reflections on our planet was... it all felt too oddly familiar. the setting of this was so eerie and I could vividly picture everything. I did unfortunately find that this slowed significantly in the middle of the novel, despite it being under 200 pages and I struggled to connect to any of the characters which was such a shame! but the setting oh my

some quotes I adored / think need to be highlighted in our current world climate:

~ 'there would soon be only ice, snow, stillness, death; no more violence, no war, no victims; nothing but frozen silent, absence of life. the ultimate achievement of mankind would be, not just self-destruction, but the destruction of all life; the transformation of the living world into a dead planet' (this was written in the 60s btw!!!!)

~ 'the moon's dead eye watching the death of our world.'

~ 'pale cliffs looming, radiating dead cold, ghostly avengers coming to end mankind. I knew the ice was closing in around us, my own eyes had seen the ominous moving wall. I knew it was coming closer each moment, and would go on advancing until all life was extinct.'

This was a really good book! it was a scary book with real issues, like abuse and climate change, and showed some real dangerous things that could happen. It was entertaining, but it was a scary dark read at the same time.


Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

What an odd book. I'm on a huge sci-fi kick now, and even though this is on a few "classics" lists, I'm surprised it's not more well-known. I think it's best to go in without knowing much about the story. The only thing I'll say is that the setting is unlike anything I've ever come across. It's apocalyptic, and believable, and creepy, and cold. Give it a go.

Gripping, relentless, and utterly nightmarish, this prose reads like a stream of unfiltered terror—so intense it’s almost impossible to process, yet equally impossible to look away. The plot? A desperate, globe-spanning rescue mission racing against the inevitability of an ice-driven apocalypse. Or maybe it’s a chase. That’s the catch: everything is layered, ambiguous, blurred by subjectivity and dream logic—everything except the ice. The ice is absolute, unstoppable, immune to denial or fantasy.

Books like this are hard to pull off, walking a razor-thin line between brilliance and chaos. But this one? It grabs hold and doesn’t let go. I was mesmerized, not just by its raw verbal intensity but by its moral weight—a stark, urgent exploration of what it means to be human, of the destruction we’ve inflicted on each other and the planet. A rare, haunting masterpiece.