Eleven Percent

An inverse The Handmaid’s Tale that asks: What if women took over the world?

It is the New Time, a time not so different from ours except that the men are gone. All but eleven percent, that is, the minimum required to avoid inbreeding. But they are safely under lock and key in “spa” centers for women’s pleasure (trained by amazons to fulfill all desires) and procreation. A few women protest that the males should be treated better – more space, better food, but all agree that testosterone cannot be allowed to go free. The old patriarchal cities are crumbling, becoming overgrown (women don’t blow things up); people now live in round houses in round communities. But if you prefer the slum, that’s okay too. Religion has survived, sort of: women priestesses speak in tongues, inspired by snake venom, as apples are passed around to the congregation.

Four different lives intersect: Medea, a tiny, long-haired witch and snake whisperer; Wicca, a young priestess who excelled at the “self-pleasuring” curriculum in school and has lost her pregnant lover; Eva, a doctor working in a spa center, and Silence, who lives in an almost abandoned convent. Each has a secret and one is not what she seems.

This is the first novel to appear in English by celebrated Danish author Maren Uthaug. Provocative, irreverent, slightly squeamish-making and completely riveting, Eleven Percent makes you think.