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Anna Kavan was born in 1901, the only child of a wealthy British family. She began publishing under her married name, Helen Ferguson. During this time, she was introduced to heroin by her tennis coach in order to improve her game. She suffered a breakdown after the end of her second marriage, and was committed to an institution to treat both her depression and her addiction. She published her two best-known novels after this experience, Asylum Piece and Ice, under 'Anna Kavan', the name of a character in an earlier novel. She died of heart failure at her home in London in 1968.
Just the most magnificent book...hugely enigmatic, a genuine novel of the unconscious and a masterpiece. I feel very passionate about it, as you can probably tell. -- Frank Tallis * Guardian * Ice is superbly unsettling... this novel is perfect winter reading. -- James Marriott * The Times * Brutal, addictive and extremely entertaining... strange, unsettling and harsh * Guardian * One of the most terrifying postulations about the end of the world.. One can only admire the strength and courage of this visionary * The Times * One of the most mysterious of modern writers, Anna Kavan created a uniquely fascinating fictional world. Few contemporary novelists could match the intensity of her vision -- J.G. Ballard There is nothing else like it... This ice is not psychological or metaphysical ice; here the loneliness of childhood has been magicked into a physical reality as hallucinatory as the Ancient Mariner's. -- Doris Lessing Astonishes with poetic brilliance * Sunday Telegraph *
