The 27th century: beleaguered elites decide to melt the Greenland icecap. Why? ? to open up a new continent, for colonisation by the unruly masses. How? ? by harvesting the primordial heat of the Earth from Iceland's volcanoes. Nature fights back, and it all goes horribly wrong... Readers accustomed to following a story via Plot and Character may at first be disoriented by this epic of the future. Its structure is more symphonic than novelistic, driven by themes and motifs that emerge, fade back, emerge again in new orchestral voicings and new tempi. The prose ? supple, rhythmic, harsh, elegiac, tender, unsparing ? propels the reader on through scene after vivid scene. Mountains Oceans Giants is a literary counterpart to the painted dreams and nightmares of Hieronymus Bosch, in The Garden of Earthly Delights and The Last Judgement. Extravagant praise for this novel: "I know of no attempt in literature that pulls together so boldly and directly the human and the divine, piling on every kind of action, thought, desire, love... Here perhaps the true face of Expressionism reveals itself for the first time..." ? Max Krell "...this extravagant book, whose theme is the heaven-storming extravagance of humanity, written as if under a visionary over-pressure..." ? Gunter Grass 1978
