Cleft

<p><strong>From Doris Lessing one of the most important writers of the past hundred years (<em>Times</em> of London) comes a brilliant darkly provocative alternative history of humankind's beginnings.</strong></p><p>In this fascinating and beguiling novel Lessing confronts the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women manage to live side by side in the world and how the troublesome particulars of gender affect every aspect of our existence.</p><p>In the last years of his life a Roman senator retells the history of human creation and reveals the little-known story of the Clefts an ancient community of women living in an Edenic coastal wilderness. The Clefts have neither need nor knowledge of men; childbirth is controlled through the cycles of the moon and they bear only female children. But with the unheralded birth of a strange new child--a boy--the harmony of their community is suddenly thrown into jeopardy.</p><br/>