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.
“One of postcolonial fiction’s brightest lights makes mythic the battle of the sexes. . . . A dark parable, powerful . . . ” — Kirkus Reviews
“A superb and daring work…An extraordinary vision of the establishment of human life on Earth that overturns every other way of seeing it…As speculative and outrageous as it is, it is also convincing in the way all fine art is convincing…What an amazing book, bringing together as it does Lessing’s radicalism, her feminism and her propensity for speculative fiction in a marvelous…gift from one of the great mothers of the contemporary novel.” — Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
“Doris Lessing-iconoclast and feminist icon…stirs up debate…She has written a revised origin of species…ironic, provocative, epic, heretical, post-modern…vividly descriptive” — Elsbeth Lindner, Miami Herald
“Lessing, as she so often does, begins with stereotypes and ends with archetypes…This, she says is how it is and always has been with men and women.” — John Leonard, Harper's Magazine
“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
“Outspoken, prolific, and influential, Lessing has cycled through an array of literary genres in her quest to tell stories that protest prejudice, fathom consciousness, and chart the entrenched battle between the sexes….A mordantly entertaining fable rich in incident, discernment, and reflection.” — Donna Seaman, Booklist
“Eminent novelist Lessing offers an alternative origin story for the human race.” — Publishers Weekly
“Like Philip Roth’s EVERYMAN, [THE CLEFT] has the feeling of a conceptual fable, a pared down form that perhaps only writers who have tried so much can permit themselves. Where Roth gave us life told as a tale by a mortal and altogether male body, Lessing gives us a myth of origin and a speculation on how sexual difference tumbled us into history where generation is key.” — Lisa Appignanesi, The Times (London)
