The Cleft - Softcover

Lessing, Doris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060834870 ISBN 13: 9780060834876

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2008

Synopsis

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 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.

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.

About this title

Review:

"Superb and daring...What an amazing book...A marvelous...gift from one of the great mothers of the contemporary novel."--Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

"Eminent novelist Lessing offers an alternative origin story for the human race."--Publishers Weekly

"One of postcolonial fiction's brightest lights makes mythic the battle of the sexes. . . . A dark parable, powerful . . . "--Kirkus Reviews

"The raw excitement of life in an age when fire was a novelty, and notions of time, family, morality, were completely alien, is well captured...Pure entertainment; an amusing series of what-ifs by one of the world's great storytellers."--Sunday Telegraph

"A revised origin of species...ironic, provocative, epic, heretical, post-modern...vividly descriptive."--Elsbeth Lindner, Miami Herald

"At the age of 87, the grande dame of British letters has lost none of the grit or political drive that has propelled and compelled her writing over the years...At its core, THE CLEFT is a creation myth...Lessing...tells an interesting tale, one that is both cautionary and consistent with what we all know to be true--we can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em."--Baltimore Sun

"A bold, inventive and challenging book from a writer who continues to enlighten and astonish us."--Michael Arditti, Arts & Book Review

From the Back 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0060834870
• ISBN 13: 9780060834876
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272