'There is nothing else quite like Ice' Doris Lessing Set in a frozen world that is gradually being devastated by ever-encroaching ice, Anna Kavan's masterwork follows one man's pursuit of a mysterious silver-haired girl to the ends of the earth; to the end of everything. 'A brutal novel of a frozen post-nuclear dystopia. Just the most magnificent book ... hugely enigmatic, a genuine novel of the unconscious and a masterpiece' Frank Tallis, Guardian 'Few novelists match the intensity of her...

Set in an unspecified but eerily familiar time and landscape, this is the story of Mark, a protagonist who struggles against the machinations of a hostile society and bureaucracy. Suffering at first from the persecution of his father as a conscientious objector, his life quickly comes under the control of the Machiavellian Mr. Spector, an influential government minister who arranges Mark's education, later employment, and even accommodation. It is when Mark tries to break free from Spector...

**This dystopian science fiction classic details the hallucinatory hunt for a white-haired girl, through a frozen, post-apocalyptic landscape“A haunting story of sexual assault and climate catastrophe, decades ahead of its time” – The New Yorker“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**Anticipating climate fiction and the...

Short stories addressing the surreal realities of mental illness, from an incredible cult writer often compared to Kafka and WoolfThe tortured life of Anna Kavan brought her some reward in terms of great pieces of art. Her drug addiction bore fruit in the Julia and the Bazooka collection of stories; while this companion volume recalls her experience of the asylum—powerful, haunting works which can be harrowing but are full of sympathy too.

The story of a family marooned in a country house near an ugly, expanding manufacturing town of the 1920s, while yearning for life in the capital. Anna Kavan masterfully contrasts the English countryside with the brittle London life of the era.

Depicting the hopeless, emotional polarity of a young couple, this novel follows their doomed marriage spent in a remote, tropical hell. She—described only as "the girl"—is young, sophisticated and sensitive. He, "Mr. Dog-Head," is an unreconstructed thug and heavy drinker who rapes his wife, otherwise passing his time bludgeoning rats with a tennis racket. Together with a visiting stranger, "Suede Boots"—who urges the woman to escape until he is banished by her husband—these characters li...

A classic later novel by Anna Kavan.A largely autobiographical account of an unhappy childhood, this daring synthesis of memoir and surrealist experimentation chronicles the subject's gradual withdrawal from the daylight world of received reality. Brief flashes of daily experience from childhood, adolescence, and youth are described in what is defined as "nighttime language"—a heightened, decorative prose that frees these events from their gloomy associatio...

An early work from Anna Kavan strongly evoking life in England and its colonies from the early years of the century through the period following the First World War. More straightforward than her more famous novels, Let Me Alone is nevertheless fascinating for its hint of the personal stresses that was to inform much of her uncompromising storylines.

The Parson was not published in Anna Kavan's lifetime, but found after her death in manuscript form. Thought to have been written between the mid 50s and early 60s, it presages, through its undertones and imagery, some of Kavan's last and most enduring fiction (such as Ice). It was published finally, to wide acclaim, by Peter Owen in 1995. The Parson of the title is not a cleric, but an upright young army officer so nick-named for his apparent prudishness. On lea...

Described by Brian Aldiss as "De Quincey's heir and Kafka's sister," junkie, depressive, radical, enigma, cult figure, genre-bending experimental writer and artist—few women writers have gathered the same air of mystique, so often the preserve of male counter-culture figures, as Helen Woods, more commonly known by her adopted pen name and persona: Anna Kavan. This anthology of Anna Kavan's short fiction and journalism marks the 50 years since her death in 1968, offering an accessible intro...

Enter the strange and haunting world of Anna Kavan, author of mind-bending stories that blend science fiction and the author's own harrowing experiences with drug addiction, in this new collection of her best short stories.Anna Kavan is one of the great originals of twentieth-century fiction, comparable to Leonora Carrington and Jean Rhys, a writer whose stories explored the inner world of her imagination and plumbed the depths of her long addiction to heroin. This...