Product Description

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. Earths 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.