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 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. Ice 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. This 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.
