★ A brand-new work by interdisciplinary researcher, literary scholar, journalist, and translator Anne-Sophie Balser! She seamlessly blends over two centuries of poetic history, cutting-edge glaciology, and personal travelogue, using exquisitely delicate and deeply poetic language to blur the boundaries between natural science and human emotion, establishing herself as a rising female voice in European nature writing in recent years.
★ Recommended by New Books in German—a leading platform for contemporary German-language literature. The book has been recognized by one of the most authoritative outlets in the field of German literature abroad, demonstrating strong international appeal and translation potential. The Goethe-Institut New York has also chosen excerpts from Balser’s work for use in the Gutekunst Translation Prize competition.
★ This book offers a fresh and insightful perspective on the relationship between humanity and the natural world! Unlike data-driven climate books, it is one of the most literary works of nonfiction, skillfully weaving rigorous scientific argument with lyrical expression. It will appeal to readers who enjoy the works of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert Macfarlane, and Kathleen Jamie.
★ Long before “climate crisis” entered our lexicon, poets, painters, and explorers had already fallen deeply in love with, feared, and mourned these icy realms. With elegance and urgency, this book recounts the profound and serene history of glaciology, taking us on a 250-year journey through the cultural and emotional life of glaciers. From the Alps to Greenland, from the Arctic to Antarctica, Balser fuses glaciology and climate science with poetry, art history, and personal narrative, creating a rare kind of book—one that both enlightens the mind and touches the heart.

◎ Climate anxiety is intensifying: as heatwaves, droughts, and the recent devastating flash floods in Nepal and Tibet repeatedly make global headlines, readers are increasingly seeking nonfiction narratives that convey the climate crisis with emotional depth, rather than purely scientific analysis.
◎ Universally relevant and timeless: unlike climate books driven by news cycles, this is a perennial classic that stands the test of time. It does not chase fleeting trends but is rooted in the glacier’s own rhythm—slow, quiet, yet irreversible. No matter how glaciers change, the observations, poetry, and reflections they hold will remain worthy of revisiting for generations to come. On any bookshelf, it will never grow old.

Global warming is not an abstract, future threat. It is a lived, sensory reality that fundamentally shapes our world and lives. And yet, it is so hard to approach topics as monumental and frightening as the climate catastrophe. Numbers, statistics and the constant declarations of “This is the warmest year since records began!” are simply not doing the trick to help us grasp the emergency we are living in. We need to both understand and feel what is at stake.

“I can feel a glacier flipping in my chest”—Anne-Sophie Balser

From people gliding across glaciers in flared skirts and high heels to the funerals held for vanishing ice—this book is a comprehensive history of glaciers, uniquely blending natural science with literature.
Our understanding of glaciers shapes glaciology and climate science. The world is watching their research: the Arctic is warming, Greenland’s glaciers are melting rapidly, massive icebergs are breaking off from Antarctica’s shelves, and the Alps’ glaciers will disappear by 2080. This knowledge is vital, but it still leaves us wondering what it truly feels like to stand on a glacier and feel the icy wind biting at your skin. People’s love for ice—and the concern and sorrow they feel as it vanishes—are reflected in poetry and art.
Anne-Sophie Balser takes us on a journey through 250 years of poetic glacier history and how it has been expressed in narratives, poems, and works of art—a unique, existential exploration.
Let’s learn to truly feel climate change.

Anne-Sophie Balser
Anne-Sophie Balser is an interdisciplinary researcher, literary scholar, journalist, writer, and translator. She was born in 1988, the year we experienced severe wildfires and droughts, and when a NASA scientist told Congress that climate change is real. That year also marked the first time the concept of global warming was formally brought into the public consciousness.
As an interdisciplinary researcher who has long been immersed in the field of environmental humanities, Anne-Sophie holds a Bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Erfurt and a Master’s degree in Cultural Theory and History from Humboldt University of Berlin. From 2021 to 2025, she was a member of the (Re) Graduate School of Environmental Studies at the University of Augsburg and a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship.
She writes essays, nonfiction, reviews, feature articles, and poetry, combining rigorous academic training with keen literary insight. As a freelance journalist and cultural critic, her work frequently appears in leading media outlets such as DIE ZEIT, taz, and Deutschlandfunk (DLF). Her previous research has focused on the distinctive “glacial imagery” found in literature and modern poetry, and she has authored papers titled “Writing with Glaciers: The Poetics of Glaciers in Contemporary Anthropocene Works” and “Writing with Glaciers.” Additionally, her English-language poems and translations have been published in journals including Amberflora, Plant & Human Quarterly, Eco-sonnet Chain, and Blood Orange Review.
With a special focus on the Scandinavian Peninsula and the northernmost regions, she has sought to deepen her understanding of the human–environment connection by living on Norwegian farms and camping along glacial moraines, transforming these firsthand experiences into creative nourishment. Until 2025, she taught at the University of Augsburg and wrote a dissertation on glaciers in contemporary English poetry. She has lived atop gravestones from three ice ages and currently resides in the Mainz Basin along the Rhine, a region that once formed part of a tundra-steppe during glacial periods—and which, in earlier times, was a sea.

rologue — It is everywhere

Chapter 1: Poetry, a consolation
Chapter 2: A brief history of glaciology
Chapter 3: Oh, it must be seen, heard, felt! How female poets and painters look at glaciers
Chapter 4: Ice cores telling of deep time
Chapter 5: Vatnasafn, the library of water
Chapter 6: Cryophilia, or how to make friends with a glacier
Chapter 7: Who or what are we burying?
Chapter 8: The last glacier at the end of the world. How indigenous cultures experience its disappearance
Chapter 9: Icebergs – bits and bobs
Chapter 10: On the end and on ends

Epilogue — Ghostly Glaciers

Notes
Illustrations
Acknowledgements