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About
Widely acknowledged as Joanna Russ's masterpiece, The Female Man is the suspenseful, surprising, darkly witty, and boldly subversive chronicle of what happens when Jeannine, Janet, Joanna, and Jael-all living in parallel worlds-meet. Librarian Jeannine is waiting for marriage in a past where the Depression never ended, Janet lives on a utopian Earth with an all-female population, Joanna is a feminist in the 1970s, and Jael is a warrior with claws and teeth on an Earth where male and female societies are at war with each other. When the four women begin traveling to one another's worlds, their preconceptions on gender and identity are forever challenged.
With "palpable anger... leavened by wit and humor" (The New York Times), Russ both employs and upends genre conventions to deliver a wickedly satiric and exhilarating version of when worlds collide and women get woke.
With "palpable anger... leavened by wit and humor" (The New York Times), Russ both employs and upends genre conventions to deliver a wickedly satiric and exhilarating version of when worlds collide and women get woke.
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Reviews
"The narrative muscularity of the book, its sustained rage about the condition of women in contemporary America, and its intensely loaded manipulation of levels of reality, all... betray [Russ's] undoubted knack for telling a gripping tale."
The Washington Post
"A wonderfully inventive novel, this interplanetary exploration of feminist inner space, this sophisticated, playful fantasy book is, of course, all about reality."
Phyllis Chesler
"A stunning book, a work to be read with great respect. It's also screamingly funny."
Elizabeth Lynn, San Francisco Review of Books