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Ice
by
Jacek Dukaj
general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | Ice |
| Author: | Jacek Dukaj |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Written: | 2007 (Eng. 2025) |
| Length: | 1183 pages |
| Original in: | Polish |
| Availability: | Ice - US |
| Ice - UK | |
| Ice - Canada | |
| from: Bookshop.org (US) |
- Polish title: Lód
- Translated and with a Postscript by Ursula Phillips
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Our Assessment:
B : weighed down quite a bit by its epic scale, but a lot here that is engaging
See our review for fuller assessment.
| Source | Rating | Date | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial Times | . | 24/1/2026 | James Lovegrove |
| The Guardian | . | 5/12/2025 | Adam Roberts |
| The Guardian | . | 25/12/2025 | Stuart Kelly |
| TLS | . | 12/12/2025 | Sophie Pinkham |
From the Reviews:
- "It would be trite, but not inaccurate, to say that Ice moves at a glacial pace, with pages-long paragraphs and much sombre musing by the protagonist. Ursula Phillips has braved the monumental task of translating Dukaj’s tome into English, and the result is a very readable but at times dauntingly abstruse work. It’s one of those novels for which the adjective “ambitious” is both praise and condemnation." - James Lovegrove, Financial Times
- "Capacious, packed with invention and incident, set in a baroquely detailed world with a brilliantly chilly atmosphere, and featuring stimulating metaphysical exposition and kinetic and thrilling set pieces, this is a marvellous ice-palace of a novel." - Adam Roberts, The Guardian
- "Ice is not just a cerebral romp. There are moments of hilarity and horror; chapters full of pathos, a moment unfurling a life of regrets. It is a gloomy, sharp, dazzling work." - Stuart Kelly, The Guardian
- "The ensuing adventures are hard to follow because, from the time he boards the Trans-Siberian, Gieroslawski narrates his own acts in a neutral, abstract third person, hoping to free himself of the limitations of a single viewpoint and thereby come closer to universal truth. With the imperfect equivalents available in English, the translator, Ursula Phillips, awkwardly resorts to the imperative (.....) Bemused by Ice, I consulted Goodreads for the opinions of fans. (...) Even among hardcore sci-fi readers, the author is known for his difficulty, and Ice is widely considered to be the most "hermetic" of his novels. This is no warm bath for the mind; it is more like trying to learn a foreign language without a grammar or dictionary." - Sophie Pinkham, Times Literary Supplement
Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.
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The complete review's Review:
Ice is not only a massive work -- just short of 1200 rather tightly printed pages; around half a million words -- but also comes with a lengthy (sixteen-page) Translator's Postscript by Ursula Phillips that is, somewhat ominously, titled: 'Translating the 'untranslatable''. In it, Phillips explains some of the difficulties she faced and choices she made. There are the obvious basics, as it were, -- "the fundamental structural differences between the two languages and the frequent lack of exact equivalents" -- but also issues very specific to this novel. One is the narrative voice, that of the novel's protagonist, Benedykt Gierosławski:
The whole narrative is written by him, from his perspective, filtered through his mind, reactions and speculations. It is not a third-person narrative. Yet it uses a third-person grammatical form, which thereby avoids the use of first-person indicators, including the pronouns 'I' and 'me' as well as masculine past-tense endings.Phillips' solution for these parts in the third-person grammatical form -- a significant part of but not the entire the novel, as it shifts back to a more familiar first-person narrative later in the novel -- is to: "take the purely semantic element of an infinitive and omit indicators of person, gender and tense" -- which, she notes, often: "sounds like an imperative"; she suggests this (as well some additional features, including not using the past tense for statements relating exclusively to Gierosławski): "works, I estimate, in about eighty per cent of instances. (She also suggests: "My usage may feel odd when first encountered (as it does in the Polish) but the persevering reader will adjust".) It can read very oddly -- for example, when Gierosławski trips and is helped up again it is expressed: "Tesla assisted the return to the feet" or, at another point, when he describes ... sitting down as: "By the time the breath had been caught and a sitting position assumed" -- but, yes, one mostly does get used to it (and the use of this approach for much of the novel, as well as specifically the avoidance of first-person indicators (I, me), except for in quoted dialogue, does make sense, given Gierosławski's: "philosophical speculations about 'non-existence' that run through the book").
Other issues Phillips had to deal with include the fact that Dukaj: "employs standard Polish orthography from before the reforms of 1936" -- which, as she notes: "dramatically altered the way a text appears on the page" and make the text: "feel antiquated and give a sense of the distant past". It being impossible to convey a similar archaic feel without going back much further re. English usage, Phillips: "decided to use Victorian and early-twentieth-century literary English as my inspiration" -- including being: "careful not to use any word or expression that would not have been used before 1930". In addition, while written in Polish, much of the novel set in a Russia of the mid-1920s to 1930 includes: "a significant number of Russian words and phrases woven into it, incorporated into a natural flow and transcribed not in Cyrillic but in the Latin alphabet adapted to the Polish ear and orthography". Some of this Russian is translated, but much is left ("so as to preserve something of a Russian flavour") -- and a four-page Glossary helps with these terms (as well as with the neologisms ('frostoglaze', etc.) and other coinages).
Certainly, Ice does -- and is meant to -- read as 'other', of a different time and world. Though set not that long ago -- it begins and most of it takes place in 1924 --, Ice is an alternate history: there was no First World War and the 1917 Russian Revolution never succeeded; Russia is still ruled by the Tsar; Emperor Franz Ferdinand rules over a still-extant Austro-Hungarian Empire. (American politics only figures peripherally in most of the novel, but here James Cox is president.) There is also a significant science-fiction element, the 'ice' of the title. This is not, in fact, traditional ice; called 'gleiss' (gleissen in the plural), it is described in the Glossary as: "exceptionally cold frosty matter appearing to move or pass through solid phenomena". Its temperature is far below the freezing point of water, freezing anything it comes into contact with solid. And it moves, and it is spreading, individual gleissen and icecradles now found beyond Siberia, including in Warsaw, where Benedykt Gierosławski lives when the novel opens.
The backstory as to the gleissen is only more fully presented well into the novel, where it is explained that:
On the thirtieth of June 1908, reckoning by the Gregorian calendar, in the early morning, close to the Podkamennaya Tunguska river in central Siberia -- there was an explosion, a hurricane, an earthquake and a pillar of fire and smoke, that's how it began.The historic 'Tunguska Event' (e.g.) is taken as a turning and starting point, its impact here presented as bringing with it other consequences. A new form of ice, much colder than the familiar one, starts spreading:
In the spring of 1909, rumours began to filter from the north of new meteorological phenomena, namely of unrelenting winter and unimaginably cruel frosts still shackling central Siberia, despite the calendar change of seasons.By: "1912, the Year of the Gleissen, the Ice bites into Europe". But with the cold also come new opportunities in the form of new resources and, with them, industrial possibilities: tungetitum, an: "element appearing after the impact of June 1908", and coldiron: "iron modified and super-strengthened by the Ice". With all of the world's deposits of tungetitum and coldiron located on Russian territory there is a great deal of activity here.
The new conditions and opportunities lead, in Russia, to the rise of two factions:
Lyednyaks convinced that only gleissen are defending Russia from downfall and bloody chaos, that only the Ice protects her from collapse; and Ottepyelniks persuaded that until they drive the Frost from the country, no reform will have any effect, that no coup, no revolution and no democratisation is possible, and that nothing will change for the good in this autocratic realmGierosławski is a mathematician and philosopher, a recent graduate of the Imperial University now, in 1924, studying for the rigorosum -- working together with Alfred Tarski. He supports himself by giving math-lessons -- and it seems he has a gambling problem, owing others quite a bit of money. He is also the son of Filip Gierosławski -- sentenced in 1907 to fifteen years of hard labor, a sentence that was commuted in 1917, though he had to remain in the General Governorate of Amur and Irkutsk (i.e. the eastern reaches of Siberia). The father has long not been in touch with the son, but now the tsarist authorities want Benedykt to seek out his father, because of the man's special ability: apparently he: "converses with gleissen".
Much of Ice then is a quest tale, a son in search of his father -- a search which also might lead to some of the truths about the mysterious gleissen, and possibly some control over it. A long (and eventful) stretch of the novel takes place on the Trans-Siberian Express (with a few stops along the way, planned and unplanned) -- Gierosławski on his way to Irkutsk, 'the City of Ice'.
Among those traveling with Gierosławski on the train is historic figure Nikola Tesla -- trying to travel, not very successfully, incognito. Forces are out to get Tesla, who has successfully experimented with some of the new possibilities the Ice has opened up -- including figuring out how to generate 'teslectricity'. He continues to experiment -- and has been sent by the tsar to counter the gleissen. But the worry of some is that should he succeed: "in scorching the Ice out of Russia, he would liquidate at a stroke the whole coldiron industry".
Apparently, there are those who want to kill Tesla to prevent him from completing his mission -- though it soon is clear there are also some eager to thwart Gierosławski's mission as well. Many people on the train are not who they claim and danger seems to lurk everywhere. This stretch of the novel makes for quite the rousing adventure tale, with Gierosławski rather, as one character puts it: "a young man out of his depth, fallen amongst people of power and money who are accustomed to dealing with other people of power and money". Among other things, he finds himself flung off the train at one point, very much in the middle of nowhere .....
Along the way and afterwards, there's also some romantic dancing -- literal and otherwise -- by Gierosławski, notably with the figure of fellow-Pole Jelena Muklanowicz. As he wonders at one point -- where the use of the third-person narrative voice works to best effect --: "Has love been fallen into ?" Among the best scenes in the novel is when they recount for each other their life-stories -- both leaving unclear how much of what they reveal is, in fact, true. (Already early on Jelena had reacted enthusiastically to him: "'What lies you tell, sir !' Jelena Muklanowicz was enraptured and almost put her hands together in prayer. 'What lies you tell !'")
In Irkutsk the authorities still push Gierosławski to complete his assignment, but even they have only a vague idea of where his father can be found. Apparently this: "Father Frost relocates along the Ways of the Mammoths" .....
In any case, the path to looking for, much less finding his father is long, and Gierosławski first spends much of it in Irkutsk, taking up a position at Krupp's Cryophysics Laboratory and eventually also penning a pamphlet, Apoliteia, or the Un-State. The swirling and competing interests -- political and industrial -- continue to affect his course; Tesla and his work also continue to play a role.
The novel is divided into four parts, and ten chapters (with numerous unnumbered sub-chapters), and it is only in the final part and chapter that Gierosławski reaches the pivotal point. It makes for a shift -- also in the narrative voice, Gierosławski now fully coming into his own, the narrative switching to the first person. And, after so much being presented in close detail, the story moves quicky forward, its (long) conclusion then set in 1930, after several years have passed.
Then, as sometime romantic rival Porfiry Pocięgło sums up when meeting Gierosławski again:
' It didn't work out for you, huh ?' he said softly. 'With your father --'But, as with much in the novel, it's not exactly that straightforward or simple. (And, indeed, there are more than a hundred pages to go at that point, and they also prove eventful.)
'Dead.'
'With Jelena --'
'Dead.'
'With History --'
'Likewise a corpse.'
Ice tackles a variety of big themes -- some, such as the question of 'History' (also in the philosophical sense, as (arguably) independent force), closely tied to the gleissen-premise while others are more closely tied to Gierosławski and how he is portrayed. So, for example, Ice deals with existentialism and identity, as Gierosławski grapples with his (own as well as sense of) being. One reason Dukaj resorts to the long sections of this particular form of third-person narrative is because it allows Gierosławski to present himself the way he 'sees' (or perhaps one should say: doesn't see) himself, as for much of the novel he doubts his very being: "I exist not". Already very early he asks (himself) the very basic philosophical question: "Why do I speak of myself as if I had an 'I' ?" (and, of course, soon doesn't speak of himself that way, switching to his (still-his-but-presented-as) third-person narrative.
Yet even non-existence is meaningful here. As Gierosławski tells Jelena at one point: "You should make deductions according not only to what exists but also to what exists not". And, the second part of the novel closes with words:
Despite all the murches and unlichts, despite all the powers of reason turned against the Ice: the unrealised is more real than the realised.Aside from the basic existential question there is also the narrower but related one of identity, as well as the role Gierosławski is meant to be playing, here and in life. So, early on, Jelena can only wonder
Yet how many of these Benedykt Gierosławskis are there ? I have just heard a new version, about some plans for cultivating coldiron -- so coldiron is cultivated ? -- perhaps Mr Fessar was telling the truth and you, sir, were lying, I have no idea. Well then, who are you really ? Count ? Mathematician ? Fraudster ? Adventurer of sorts ? Agent of Winter ? Son of a gleissenik ? Coldiron industrialist ? Perhaps a renegade Martsynian ? Only please don't say all at once ! Or each one a tenth !So also then Gierosławski's quest is for identity and a sense of being; in a sense he 'finds himself' as he finds his father and moves beyond that, so also, as noted, in at that point in the novel finding his voice and shifting his narrative voice back to the first person.
While Ice is an alternate-history, actual geo-politics are reflected in it as well. We find, for example competing Trotskyists and Leninists, while Józef Piłsudski figures prominently -- not as a leader of a (here still not existing) Polish state but striving for one (at one point laying out cards and explaining: "I had a bet with myself that if this patience comes out, then I shall be dictator of Poland"). ")
More so than questions of local -- especially Polish and Russian -- geo-politics, Ice is a novel that consider 'History' itself, in (in particular) the Hegelian sense, and the concept (and reality) of 'the state'. The gleissen and their physical consequences change the world -- but above it all looms more abstract History, in capital letters. As Piłsudski says:
History rules -- but who rules History, Mr Gierosławski ? Who rules History ?Can History be changed ? Can an individual affect change in it -- or is it delusion to believe that to be possible ? Pocięgło reminds Gierosławski, as he sets out on his mission: "Is there any mightier power imaginable to man on Earth than the ability to control History ?" -- but, of course, the question is whether any man -- any individual -- can have that power ..... After all, as Gierosławski reflects, one of the big questions about his father -- apparently able to converse with gleissen ! -- and what he has been up to is, even though he has this amazing ability, after so much time -- five years --: "why had History not changed ?"
Finally, Ice is also a fine love-story, a nice surprise along the way; the banter and interplay with Jelena is particularly good, but Gierosławski is also involved with other women, such as the one traveling with Tesla.
Ice is a huge, sprawling novel. Meant to evoke the grand late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian (and Polish) novel traditions -- in scope as well as language -- it does that well, though Dukaj can't quite sustain absorption with text and story as the best of Russian and Polish novels of that time do. (That said, his also goes on at greater length than all but a few of them.) The epic scale and ambition impresses, and there are stretches that are very exciting, but readers may well bog down at times -- I did. Nevertheless, it rewards patience -- harder to find or make in these fast times --; it can be a slog at times (hardly surprising, over nearly 1200 pages ...), but is worth pushing through.
- M.A.Orthofer, 27 January 2026
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Ice:
- Head of Zeus publicity page
- culture.pl information page
- Wydawnictwo Literackie publicity page
- Q & A with Jacek Dukaj
- Q & A with translator Ursula Phillips
- Why Ice ? - Ursula Phillips on translating Ice
- European Union Prize for Literature, 2009
- Felix
- The Guardian
- The Guardian (scroll down for review)
- Locus
- Glenn Cole Russell
- See Index of Eastern European literature
- See Index of Science Fiction and Fantasy books
- See Index of Real People in Works of Fiction
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Polish author Jacek Dukaj was born in 1974.
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© 2026 the complete review
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