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The Cleft
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The Cleft Paperback - 2008

by Doris Lessing

In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing envisions a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, jealousy, and petty rivalries--essentially, a society free from men. Lessing confronts the troublesome particulars of how gender affects every aspect of peoples existence.


From the publisher

From Doris Lessing, "one of the most important writers of the past hundred years" (Times of London), comes a brilliant, darkly provocative alternative history of humankind's beginnings.

In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women manage to live side by side in the world and how the troublesome particulars of gender affect every aspect of our existence.

In the last years of his life, a Roman senator retells the history of human creation and reveals the little-known story of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic coastal wilderness. The Clefts have neither need nor knowledge of men; childbirth is controlled through the cycles of the moon, and they bear only female children. But with the unheralded birth of a strange new child--a boy--the harmony of their community is suddenly thrown into jeopardy.


From the rear cover

From Doris Lessing, "one of the most important writers of the past hundred years" (Times of London), comes a brilliant, darkly provocative alternative history of humankind's beginnings.

In the last years of his life, a Roman senator embarks on one final epic endeavor, a retelling of the history of human creation. The story he relates is the little-known saga of the Clefts, an ancient community of women with no knowledge of nor need for men. Childbirth was controlled through the cycles of the moon, and only female offspring were born--until the unanticipated event that jeopardized the harmony of their close-knit society: the strange, unheralded birth of a boy.

Details

  • Title The Cleft
  • Author Doris Lessing
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition a
  • Pages 272
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Harper Perennial, NY USA
  • Date 2008-01-29
  • ISBN 9780060834876 / 0060834870
  • Weight 0.5 lbs (0.23 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 in (20.07 x 13.46 x 1.78 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Fantasy fiction, Psychological fiction
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

Citations

  • New York Times Book Review, 02/17/2008, Page 24
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