{"title":"Books by Anna Kavan","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781805330981","title":"Ice","description":"\u003cb\u003eThis dystopian science fiction classic details the hallucinatory hunt  for a white-haired girl, through a frozen, post-apocalyptic landscape\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A haunting story of sexual assault and climate catastrophe, decades ahead of its time” – \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnticipating climate fiction and the New Weird literary genre, while garnering fans from Doris Lessing and J.G. Ballard to China Miéville and Patti Smith since it was first published in 1967, this fantasia about predatory male sexual behavior during an apocalyptic climate catastrophe reads as though author Anna Kavan had seen the future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIce is slowly covering the entire globe; as the glacial tide creeps forward, the fabric of society begins to break down. Through this chaotic landscape, a nameless narrator hunts for the white-haired girl he once loved - or perhaps wishes to annihilate. Battling a powerful enemy known only as the Warden, he travels through nightmarish and ever-shifting scenes, where the object of his obsession remains constantly just out of reach. She is guarded by the Warden and by a cruel older woman who wishes her ill – but each time the narrator seems poised to rescue her the encroaching ice wreaks violence on her fragile body, or his own base nature sends him hurtling onward in his kaleidoscopic pursuit. Again and again the girl appears, but inevitably she eludes him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis dystopian classic, the last book Anna Kavan published in her lifetime, renders her apocalyptic vision of environmental devastation and possessive violence in unforgettable, propulsive, oneiric prose.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54911806407029,"sku":"9781805330981","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781805330981_85792e5e-a357-4b45-a686-fe905daaa859.jpg?v=1786027781"},{"product_id":"9781805332534","title":"Sleep Has His House","description":"\u003cb\u003eFROM THE CULT AUTHOR OF \u003ci\u003eICE\u003c\/i\u003e: A kaleidoscopic autobiographical novel in which a lonely young girl retreats ever deeper into a fragmentary dream world of beauty and menace.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn unhappy family returns to Britain from a hot country, filling their suburban house with the glittering hoard they brought back from their exotic sojourn. But the sadness of A, the wife, dulls the shine of their treasure. The house grows quieter, darker. Daughter B learns to hide inside a night-time world whose colours are undimmed by the tense misery of the daytime household. There she sails aquamarine seas on a thistledown boat, ponders the proliferation of dream-tigers, and watches dances and celebrations from the windows of a house whose rooms multiply and change position all the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs daylight circumstances deteriorate, with her mother's death and B's departure to boarding school, she becomes determined to take up permanent residence in the house of sleep. But there are night-time institutions determined to control her, and night-time battles to be fought, before she can come home to the dark forever.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA kaleidoscopic autobiographical narrative, which speaks the language of childhood dreams which was once known to us all, this is a work of astonishing visual power and devastating loneliness. An achingly beautiful work from the author of the cult slipstream novel \u003ci\u003eIce\u003c\/i\u003e, it may change the way you dream.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369237131637,"sku":"9781805332534","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781805332534_1dea4c84-ba5b-4f3a-91d5-44f476a5d9a9.jpg?v=1786027858"},{"product_id":"i-am-lazarus","title":"I Am Lazarus","description":"\u003cb\u003eA haunting collection of 15 short stories about war and mental illness, from the hallucinatory yet crystalline pen of Anna Kavan.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis darkly feverish collection of 15 stories from the cult author of \u003ci\u003eIce\u003c\/i\u003e examines war and mental illness from her signature surreal point of view. Inspired by Kavan's own experiences nursing traumatized World War II soldiers and as a patient in various asylums, these pieces communicate the claustrophobia and isolation of life amidst conflict or caught in the gears of an institutional machine—but also the stunning beauty of physical experience, as her cast of outsiders find themselves pulled back into the world despite its hostility.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIn the title story, a young man living in an asylum must navigate the often unreadable reality around him, taking cues from malevolent flowers and inhumanly brisk nurses, as we are left to wonder whether the cure harms more than the disease. \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOutside the asylum grounds, institutions still exert terrifying power, as an unnamed refugee tries to navigate a Kafkan bureaucracy to escape a war-ravaged metropolis in 'Our City'. \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHumanity goes to war with nature, too, in 'The Gannets', a brief, disturbing story that predates Daphne du Maurier's 'The Birds', featuring a band of impoverished children engaged in a horrific game with unnaturally predatory seabirds.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt times cleanly modernist, at others ornately strange and dream-like, Kavan's writing is always propulsive, powered by the tension between the menace closing in around her characters, and the incomparable loveliness of the strange world they inhabit.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57507774366069,"sku":"9781805332589","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781805332589.jpg?v=1788187145"},{"product_id":"eagles-nest","title":"Eagles' Nest","description":"A painter is working in creative isolation, under factory conditions amid a crowd of vapid typists. On discovering a note praising his work and inviting him to meet a mysterious Administrator, he decides to abandon his post and follow this lead to the remote mansion at Eagle's Nest. In this castle-like outpost, he meets blank-faced employees and wanders through networks of strange halls, yet the Administrator remains elusive and the painter's grip on reality grows ever shakier. As unsettling and paranoiac as Kafka's masterpiece The Castle, Kavan's fourth novel remains distinctively her own: a study of obsessive alienation in vertiginously beautiful prose.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57536478544245,"sku":"9781782697275","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781782697275.jpg?v=1792425284"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-anna-kavan.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}