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 AUTHOR: Alfred Doblin, born in Szczecin in 1878, initially worked as a medical assistant and opened his own practice in Berlin in 1911. Doblin's first novel appeared in 1915/16. His greatest success was the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz published in 1929. In 1933 Doblin emigrated to France and finally to the USA. After the end of the 2nd World War he moved back to Germany, but then moved in 1953 with his family to Paris. He died on June 26, 1957. SELLING POINTS: . By the legendary German author of Berlin Alexanderplatz, often in Best 100 Novels lists . First English translation . Often compared to Huxley's Brave New World and H G Wells's The Shape of Things to Come