Ice is set during an apocalypse in which a massive, monolithic ice shelf, caused by nuclear war, is engulfing the earth. The Madagascan Indris, an element which reoccurs throughout the story, came to Kavan after watching a David Attenborough nature documentary. The imagery of ice was inspired by Kavan's time in New Zealand, when she was not far from Antarctica. Like most of Kavan's novels, Ice contains autobiographical elements that are fictionalized, but for this novel in particular are used in a surrealistic sense: Kavan's extensive travelling, her marriage to artist Stuart Edmonds, and her unhappy childhood are important inspirations for elements of the novel. Owen accepted the manuscript again, and convinced Kavan to change the title from The Ice World to simply Ice.

Over the next six months, the manuscript went through extensive revisions. ' Early readers described the novel as a cross between the work of Kafka and British television series The Avengers, which Kavan felt was an apt description. This dreamlike atmosphere is the essence of the. It's a sort of present day fable.' She 'saw the story as one of those recurring dreams. Kavan defended the work, writing that 'it is not meant to be realistic writing. It was then accepted by Peter Owen, though he expressed doubts about the manuscript, citing a deficiency of character and narrative. It was first submitted to Weidenfeld & Nicolson by Francis King but was rejected.

Kavan completed an early draft of Ice in March 1964. Generally regarded as genre-defying, it has been labelled a work of science fiction, Nouveau roman, and slipstream fiction. Ice was Kavan's last work to be published before her death, the first to land her mainstream success, and remains her best-known work. Ice is a novel by British writer Anna Kavan, published in 1967.

Ice by anna kavan 1967