In this edition’s foreword, Victoria Walker - likely the preeminent authority on Anna Kavan (Walker is at work on the first critical study of Kavan) - rightly acknowledges how Kavan is compared to writers of such varying styles and preoccupations as Franz Kafka, Jean Rhys, Jane Bowles, Leonora Carrington, H.P. Her short stories, the best of which are included in this volume, showcase the vastness of both her style and subject matter.

The selections previously appeared in Asylum Piece (1940), I Am Lazarus (1945), A Bright Green Field (1958), Julia and the Bazooka (1970), and also include a previously unpublished story, “Starting a Career.” And yet, Kavan is best known for her acclaimed dystopian novel Ice (1967), which is somewhat of an injustice.

Her stories feel prescient today they capture the madness and degradation of isolation and living in a ravaged world, sentiments I can’t help but feel have also been evoked during our self-quarantined present.Ĭollected in Machines In The Head, under an arresting and apocalyptic cover featuring Gertrude Abercrombie’s Reverie (1947), are stories that span thirty years of Kavan’s career and which consequently evidence the transformation of Kavan’s style and writing concerns as they reflected what was both occurring in her personal life (institutionalization, war work, drug abuse), and what was occurring more broadly - politically. Her work is, by some odd logic, contemporary - which is to say, her writing is one that matches the hallucinatory chaos of our present. But Kavan’s writing feels both of the present and uniquely unparalleled. Anna Kavan is a singular presence in a group that includes the likes of Eve Babitz, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Ann Quin, writers whose work has been recently reissued to both acclaim and newfound followings.

Ice book anna kavan