No one in the book is named no countries are identified either. And what good is knowing anyhow? There is then, and there is now. A ‘disaster’ is mentioned, which has ‘obliterated the villages and wrecked the farms.’ Later, it is suggested that there may have been ‘a secret act of aggression by some foreign power.’ A nuclear explosion, perhaps. Who is he? Where has he come from? Where is he going? You are aware that something bad has happened, something irreversible, but details are sketchy. It is night-time, and this is telling, for isn’t the dark traditionally where danger lurks? The man drives into a petrol station and is issued a warning. The book begins, I have been told, ominously. A man is lost, hopelessly lost, and he is almost out of petrol. For an hour or two they stop killing each other, or digging, and read together or one reads and the others listen. The only movement comes from the ice and the snow, that constantly shifting, vertical and horizontal, oppression. And we are going nowhere, not even backwards. What will I understand? There is no place for that now, for the goal of understanding is progress. Read it, the cold wind says, and then you will understand.

The bitter wind that carries their voices to me will then be mute. But this is not the end, this is still something. Everywhere you look: bodies crushed under avalanches of snow hardy men torn apart by a substance as soft as tissue paper babies blue, and harder than stone, ripping through the air like bullets. I have seen so many things. Not as a distraction from the chaos but as an explanation.

Ice by anna kavan