Author: Suzette Haden Elgin
Year: 1984
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Genres/categories:
Science fiction, Fantasy
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ISBNs:
9781558612464
9781876756055
1558612467
1876756055 |
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Called "fascinating" by the New York Times upon its first publication in 1984,
won wide critical praise and cult status, and has often been compared to the futurist fiction of Margaret Atwood. Set in the twenty-second century, the novel tells of a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights and banned from public life. Earth's wealth depends on interplanetary commerce with alien races, and linguists--a small, clannish group of families--have become the ruling elite by controlling all interplanetary communication. Their women are used to breed perfect translators for all the galaxies' languages.
Nazareth Chornyak, the most talented linguist of the family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for trade organizations, supervising the children's language education, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth comes to discover is that a slow revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them from men's control.
This book is part of the "Native Tongue" series. Here are some other books from this series:
 | "Earthsong"
First published in 1994
Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "The Judas Rose"
First published in 1987
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