Nine brilliant pieces of gender-bending fiction

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Reading lists

9 brilliant pieces of gender bending fiction

He, She and It

The classic literary feminist novel about artificial intelligence

Marge Piercy is every bit as imaginative as H. G. Wells or Isaac Asimov or any of the great fantasists, but she is also a fierce and devoted activist who wants us to be more than passive readers.

A triumph of the imagination. Rich, complex, impossible to put down. Every new novel by Marge Piercy is cause for celebration

Piercy’s vision of a post-greenhouse-effect, nuclear-blasted world interlaced with the Prague ghetto of 1600, and the efforts of certain people to stay human in both, is threaded with the questions: What is it to be human? … What does `life’ mean?… What are the limits of creativity? As always, Piercy writes with high intelligence, love for the world, ethical passion and innate feminism

HE, SHE AND IT, a ground-breaking example of Jewish feminist fabulation, is a triumph

One of our boldest writers...like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, He, She and It finds disturbing trends in contemporary culture.

Marge Piercy confronts large issues in this novel: the social consequences of creating anthropromorphic cyborgs, the dynamics of programming both humans and machines, the ethical question of our control of machines that might feel as well as think.

...a philosophical romance...the story she tells is at once new and old...Vividly drawn...

Ambitious and absorbing...Woven through this incredible plot line is a magical story from the past...a very readable fable about the dangers of creating intelligent beings...Ominously real'

Marge Piercy is the author of seventeen novels including the classic Woman on the Edge of Time; nineteen volumes of poetry; four non-fiction books as well as her critically acclaimed memoir. Born in Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan, and the recipient of four honorary doctorates, she has been a key player in many of the major progressive political battles of our time, including the anti-Vietnam war and the women's movement, and more recently an active participant in the resistance to the war in Iraq. 
 
Praised as one of the few American writers who are accomplished poets as well as novelists — Piercy is one of the country's bestselling poets — she is also the master of many genres: historical novels, science fiction (for which she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction in the United Kingdom), novels of social comment and contemporary entertainments. She has taught, lectured, and performed her work at well over 400 universities around the world.

'She is a serious writer who deserves the sort of considered attention which, too often, she does not get...' MARGARET ATWOOD 
 
In the middle of the twenty-first century, life as we know it has changed for all time. Shira Shipman's marriage has broken up, and her young son has been taken from her by the corporation that runs her zone, so she has returned to Tikva, the Jewish town where she grew up. There, she is welcomed by Malkah, the brilliant grandmother who raised her, and meets an extraordinary man who is not a man at all, but a unique cyborg implanted with intelligence, emotions - and the ability to kill... 
 
 
From the critically acclaimed author of Woman on the Edge of Time, comes another stunning novel of morality and courage. A Pygmallion tale for the modern age, this classic feminist speculative novel won the Arthur C Clark Award.

Marge Piercy

Genius...Marge Piercy is every bit as imaginative as H. G. Wells or Isaac Asimov or any of the great fantasists, but she is also a fierce and devoted activist who wants us to be more than passive readers...I urge you to read Marge Piercy now.

Marge Piercy’s characters are complex and very human

Here is somebody with the guts to go into the deepest core of herself, her time, her history, and risk more than anybody else has so far, just out of a love for the truth and a need to tell it.

One of the most important novelists of our time

Marge Piercy is the political novelist of our time. More: she is the conscience

Intelligent, thoughtfully constructed…perhaps the most important novel in the Piercy canon

a fiercely brilliant writer. . . a novel which is chilling, provocative and...controversial

Anyone who wants to learn what the revolution against the fat society is all about should read Marge Piercy's novel

The classic feminist dystopian novel

'One of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning.' GLORIA STEINEM 
 
'She is a serious writer who deserves the sort of considered attention which, too often, she does not get...' MARGARET ATWOOD 
_______________________________________ 
 
Often compared to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power - Woman on the Edge of Time has been hailed as a classic of speculative science fiction. Disturbing and forward thinking, Marge Piercy's remarkable novel will speak to a new generation of readers. 
 
Connie Ramos has been unjustly incarcerated in a mental institution with no hope of release. The authorities view her as a danger to herself and to others. Her family has given up on her. 
 
But Connie has a secret - a way to escape the confines of her cell. She can see the future. . . 
 
For fans of THE HANDMAID'S TALE and THE POWER, this is a reissue of a much loved feminist classic.

Marge Piercy

Books by Marge Piercy

Articles featuring Marge Piercy

9 brilliant pieces of gender bending fiction

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