She became Helen Ferguson at the time of her first unsuccessful marriage at an early age, which was when she started writing, publishing a series of novels under that name. She had a miserable childhood with a negligent mother, several failed marriages and the death of a daughter in infancy, leading to a succession of breakdowns and long-term opioid use. The feature charts the author’s transition from Helen Woods at the time of her birth in 1901 to the self-invented persona of Anna Kavan in 1938, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. And a growing appetite for expressionist techniques and hybrid forms – and for a submerged tradition of postwar English modernism – suggests that literary culture is on her side.’ The New Yorker article states, ‘Her preoccupations – opioid addiction, extreme weather, female oppression, psychopathology – have become topics of burning interest. Its reissue has coincided with a rise in appreciation for the extraordinarily original writer, who died at home of a heart attack in 1968 with a huge stash of heroin under her bed. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Doris Lessing, Christopher Priest and Jonathan Lethem. This remains her best-known work, and its fans include the singer Patti Smith and a range of novelists associated with science fiction, including J.G. Peter Owen recently republished Ice, Kavan’s celebrated 1967 novel, in its Cased Classics series. It was edited by Victoria Walker, one of the foremost scholars on Kavan’s life and work.

A lengthy and perceptive feature review by Leo Robson in the New Yorker magazine of 23 March 2020 focuses on the British author Anna Kavan and Machines in the Head, a comprehensive new anthology of her writings published in late 2019 by Peter Owen in the UK and available in a US edition.

Ice book anna kavan