The Cleft Author:Doris Lessing Long ago, humans were all female. They lived near the ocean on rocky outcroppings, peacefully attuned to the rhythms of nature. Then, without warning or explanation, a baby was born with strange genitalia -- the first male. He was left on a rock to die, but gradually more such babies were born, and the females discovered they could no longer rep... more »roduce on their own.
Doris Lessing's strange history / mythology of the origin of human genders is told by a Roman historian, supposedly piecing together fragments of an ancient oral history. The result is a peculiar yet haunting tale, filled with powerful undercurrents and unsettling implications.« less