London: Peter Owen, 1967. First edition. Octavo. Original publisher's light blue cloth lettered in silver, first state dust jacket. Near-contemporary black ink gift inscription to front free endpaper, preliminary leaves foxed. Jacket verso foxed, with extremities a little rubbed and creased. A Near Fine copy in a Very Good dust jacket. Often found price-clipped or with the later price sticker to front flap, this jacket is the first state with neither of these imperfections.

Kavan's final novel published just before her death, and without doubt her best known. An important work of surrealist science fiction, the novel is set in a world which is being crushed by a giant ice shelf brought on by the aftermath of nuclear war, in which a nameless male protangonist pursues a nameless woman. Brian Aldiss praised it as the best science fiction work of 1967, and many have drawn links between the novel's experimental prose and themes and Kavan's history of mental illness and heroin addiction. She died as a result of the latter the following year. Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. (Item #8220)