KAVAN, Anna. Ice. With an introduction by Brian Aldiss. New York: Doubleday Science Fiction. 1970. 8vo. First American edition, first printing. Publisher’s blue cloth lettered in white to the spine, in the alluring dust jacket designed by Alan Peckolick. A very good copy. Externally, the cloth clean and bright, a trifle pushed at spine tips. The binding tight and square, remaindered with Doubleday’s customary sprayed bottom edge. Some light toning to the endpapers, else clean without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket unclipped ($4.50) and complete, with several instances of rubbing to corners and spine tips, a few tiny chips, but a presentable copy.

The author’s most well-known book, and certainly one of the strangest books read by this cataloguer, i.e. good, great even, but elusively, alarmingly so. Utterly original, hallucinogenic, and/or just plain weird. This American edition appeared three years after the Peter Owen first edition, by which time, of course, Kavan had died of heart failure (in 1968).