Karina Author, Book, Event

Blackwell’s Oxford Events: Elleke Boehmer ICE SHOCK with Lara Feigel

Blackwell’s, Broad Street Oxford

Dec 3 from 5:30pm to 6:30pm GMT

Overview

Join us for a discussion chaired by Lara Feigel with Elleke Boehmer, author of the new book ‘Ice Shock’

Ice Shock

The year is 2010. An Icelandic volcano has thrown an ash cloud into the atmosphere and, across the world, planes have stopped flying. Leah and Niall, twenty-somethings in love, find themselves strangely restless, and set out on different but parallel paths; Niall travels to a polar station in Antarctica, where the strange, lonely beauty of the ice mirrors the fragility of his hopes, while Leah studies writing in England, surrounded by tradition yet struggling to find her place.

Separated by thousands of miles, but determined to stay connected, they learn that true communication can be as fragile as the melting landscape between them. Ice Shock is a love story that asks what it means to stay close even when we are far apart – and how love can endure, in a world changing catastrophically by the day.

“Ice Shock is a propulsive and eerie love story told frame by perilous frame. Threat lurks everywhere in the gaps, beneath surfaces that shift constantly like the melting ice floes of the characters’ real and imagined Antarctic worlds.”

— Jason Allen-Paisant, winner of the Forward Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize in 2023

Elleke Boehmer

Elleke Boehmer is the author of the novels Screens against the Sky (shortlisted David Higham Prize, 1990), Bloodlines (shortlisted SANLAM prize, 2000), Nile Baby (2008) and The Shouting in the Dark (2015; co-winner Olive Schreiner prize, 2015–18), as well as the short-story collection Sharmilla and Other Portraits (2010). To the Volcano, her second short story collection, appeared in 2019. The story ‘Supermarket Love’ was commended for the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize. Her fiction probes the delicate interface between our private and public selves in haunting and unforgettable ways.

She is also Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and a founding figure in the field of postcolonial literature. Her edition of Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys was a 2004 summer bestseller, and her acclaimed biography of Nelson Mandela (2008) has been translated into Arabic, Malaysian, Thai, Kurdish, Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. She has published several other books including Stories of Women (2005), the anthology Empire Writing (1998), Indian Arrivals: Networks of British Empire (2015), and Postcolonial Poetics (2018).

Lara Feigel

Lara Feigel is the author of four highly acclaimed works of cultural history and a novel. Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at King’s College London and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she reviews regularly for the Guardian and contributes to a range of BBC radio programmes. Her new book, Custody: The Secret History of Mothers comes out in January 2026.

Karina Author, Book, Event

Love Books launch of ICE SHOCK by Elleke Boehmer

We are delighted that Elleke Boehmer is returning to South Africa for a few days and will be launching and discussing her novel Ice Shock at a few events at the end of October and beginning of November. Catch her first at Love Books on Wednesday, 29 October 2025, for her first official launch of Ice Shock. Elleke will be in conversation with Michele Magwood. Not to be missed!

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: Ice Shock by Elleke Boehmer

An Icelandic volcano has thrown an ash cloud into the atmosphere and, across the world, planes have stopped flying. Overhead, the skies are severely blue. Leah Nash and Niall Lawrence, twenty-somethings in love, grow strangely restless. They set out on different but parallel pathways. He takes on work at an Antarctic polar station and experiences the strange and lonely beauty of the precarious ice-world. She studies writing in England and struggles to find her way. They are both determined to stay together though separated by thousands of miles.
Elleke Boehmer’s Ice Shock is a love-story set against the backdrop of the melting ice-caps. The novel asks what it is to be close even when we are far apart—distant yet proximate. How do we go on loving each other when the environment around us is changing catastrophically by the day?’

PRAISE FOR ICE SHOCK

“Ice Shock is a propulsive and eerie love-story told frame by perilous frame. Threat lurks everywhere in the gaps, beneath surfaces that shift constantly like the melting ice floes of the characters’ real and imagined Antarctic worlds.”—Jason Allen-Paisant, winner of the Forward Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize in 2023

“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, Caroline’s Bikini and other novels

“Elleke Boehmer has given us a love story worth telling. The embrace of a man and a woman, separated by the distance between them—and yet so close. There is no beginning and no end, just the overpowering force of nature, the melting of the polar ice, swallowing life and the dreams of lovers.”—Véronique Tadjo, author of In the Company of Men

“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

ISBN: 978-1-0370-5782-3

Publication date: 16 May 2025

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Durban, South Africa, ELLEKE BOEHMER writes fiction, history, criticism and biography. She is the author of five novels, including Screens against the Sky (shortlisted for the David Higham Prize), Bloodlines (shortlisted for the Sanlam Prize), Nile Baby and The Shouting in the Dark (winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize), and two collections of short stories. Elleke’s To the Volcano, and Other Stories was commended for the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize, 2019. Her work has been translated into many languages, including German, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, Thai and Mandarin. Other titles include Indian Arrivals (European Society for English Studies prize-winner, 2016); Nelson Mandela (2008, 2023); Stories of Women (2005); Southern Imagining (2025). Since 2008, she is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford.