From the winner of the Orange Award for New Writers, an epic novel of childbirth - past, present, and future
The year is 1865. In Vienna, Dr. Ignasz Semmelweiss has been hounded into an asylum by his medical peers, ridiculed for his claim that doctors' unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. In present-day London, Bridget Hughes juggles her young son, husband, and mother as she plans her home birth, unprepared for the trial she is about to endure. Somewhere in 2135, in a world where humans are birthed and raised in breeding farms, Prisoner 730004 is on trial for concealing a pregnancy.
Through three stories spanning centuries, acclaimed novelist Joanna Kavenna explores the most basic plight of women, from the slaughterhouse of primitive medicine to a futurisic vision of technological oppression. Poised at the midpoint is Bridget, whose fervent belief in the wisdom of nature is tested in one of the most gripping accounts of labor to appear in fiction.
Original, powerful, and played out against a vast canvas, The Birth of Love is at once a novel about the creation of human life, science and faith, madness and compromise, and the epic journey of motherhood.
The year is 1865. In Vienna, Dr. Ignasz Semmelweiss has been hounded into an asylum by his medical peers, ridiculed for his claim that doctors' unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. In present-day London, Bridget Hughes juggles her young son, husband, and mother as she plans her home birth, unprepared for the trial she is about to endure. Somewhere in 2135, in a world where humans are birthed and raised in breeding farms, Prisoner 730004 is on trial for concealing a pregnancy.
Through three stories spanning centuries, acclaimed novelist Joanna Kavenna explores the most basic plight of women, from the slaughterhouse of primitive medicine to a futurisic vision of technological oppression. Poised at the midpoint is Bridget, whose fervent belief in the wisdom of nature is tested in one of the most gripping accounts of labor to appear in fiction.
Original, powerful, and played out against a vast canvas, The Birth of Love is at once a novel about the creation of human life, science and faith, madness and compromise, and the epic journey of motherhood.
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Used availability for Joanna Kavenna's The Birth of Love
See all available used copies of this book at: Abebooks UK or Abebooks US
Paperback Editions
May 2011 : Paperback
| Title: The Birth of Love Author(s): Joanna Kavenna ISBN: 0-571-24518-8 / 978-0-571-24518-5 (UK edition) Publisher: Faber and Faber Availability: Amazon Amazon UK More details... |
May 2010 : Paperback
| Title: The Birth of Love Author(s): Joanna Kavenna ISBN: 0-571-24517-X / 978-0-571-24517-8 (UK edition) Publisher: Faber and Faber Availability: Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
April 2010 : Paperback
| Title: The Birth of Love Author(s): Joanna Kavenna ISBN: 0-8050-9154-8 / 978-0-8050-9154-0 (USA edition) Publisher: Metropolitan Books Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
Other Editions
June 2010 : Kindle edition
| Title: The Birth of Love Author(s): Joanna Kavenna Publisher: Faber and Faber Fiction Availability: Amazon UK More details... |
April 2010 : Kindle edition
| Title: The Birth of Love: A Novel Author(s): Joanna Kavenna Publisher: Metropolitan Books Availability: Amazon More details... |
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