ICE SHOCK

275pp., paperback, Karavan Press, Cape Town, 2025

ISBN: 9781037057823

A novel about two young lovers, separated by distance and yet determined to stay together, set against the backdrop of the melting ice-caps of the Antarctic.

“Leah and Niall meet by chance on the night bus from Edinburgh to London and fall in love. They agree to ‘give each other space’ and find themselves separated by a longitudinal parabola that stretches their commitment to breaking point … Elleke Boehmer’s lucid gaze forces the reader to imagine in a more-than-Antarctic light the lacunae of human communication, the relentless otherness of the physical world, and the sheer distance between global ‘north’ and ‘south’. Terence Cave, author of Recognitions and Live Artefacts

“Light, of all kinds and colours, and the volatile seasonal uncertainty of our world, shapes this warm-blooded love story—and interferes disturbingly with it. A terrific, atmospheric novel that is also a study in thinking and learning how to be a writer.” Kirsty Gunn, author of The Boy and the Sea and Caroline’s Bikini

Elleke Boehmer is Wolfson Reader in World Literature in English at Oxford University. She is the author of Empire Writing, an anthology of colonial literature, 1870-1918 and Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, migrant metaphors. Her novels include Screens Against the Sky and An Immaculate Figure.