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An anthology of interwoven short stories that take place in a fictional ancient civilization - heavily implied to be the first ancient civilization, actually. Two pairs characters feature in all of them, until they finally meet in the last one; Norema, the barbarian woman and her companion Raven, a warrior from a matriarchal society who is constantly accosted by culture shock in this strange country where men do get to make decisions, and Gorgik and Little Sarg, the lovers, who use their old slave collar as a ruse to free other slaves, as well as a powerful symbol within their sexual relationship. (Look, Delany is a man of interesting sexual tastes and little shame, so you're going to find out about them.)

While that makes this book sound pretty lurid (which is why I decided to read it, not gonna lie), it's actually much more concerned with portraying the contrast between "barbarism" and (it also needs quotes) "civilization". The main difference between these two groups is really just a power relationship, and not intelligence, or even very visible in the lives of everyday people. This book takes place in a time where money, writing and even keys have only just been invented, and are not widely adopted yet. The "civilized" discuss how money and the invention of four-legged pots will shape society, and the "barbarians" discuss Freudian ideas on gender relations.

It's a strange little novelty, that probably never really got popular because it manages to alienate both of its possible audiences. The cover alone would turn away any high-brow intellectual, and the discussion on how to do proper theoretical analysis in chapter two would scare off any sword-and-sorcery fan. If you, by any chance, happen to fall into both of those categories, you'll probably enjoy this. If you're just wondering in fascination how Samuel Delany managed to combine those two elements, like I did, you probably will as well.

An especial treat is the last chapter, which is structured like an academic paper written about the ancient clay tablets that relate the plot of the previous chapters. It reads like a pastiche on the type of male historian who looks at any attempt to interpret history in a way that includes women's agency and potential to shape their society with benevolent paternalistic condescension. The idea that this ancient text could be written by a woman (and we, the reader, know by context clues that it was) is completely alien to him.

I have to say, I do appreciate that about Delany. The feminism in this book is very seventies, and you could write a decent Tumblr discourse post on all the ways it fails, but you don't often get a male writer so solidly on the side of feminism, so it's always quite refreshing.

I was only able to read this book because of the Internet Archive. No local libraries carry it, it's out of print and the cheapest secondhand copy is 50 bucks (and that's without factoring in the costs of shipping it across the ocean...). It's so obscure I couldn't even pirate it. And yet, it's also a cult classic by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, a great, but underappreciated author and editor of anthologies of SF/F stories by female authors (I got my profile pic from the cover of one of her anthologies!). It's a damn good 90s horror that I had wanted to read for ages.

I'm well aware that not being able to read a mostly forgotten horror novel isn't the end of the world, but I also know that there are many people in countries that don't have as solid a library system as mine does, who rely on the Internet Archive to access textbooks, academic works and all kinds of learning material. So many important, but niche books will become completely inaccessible to anyone but the people lucky enough to live close to a library carrying it. Which will mostly be people in the global North.

I wasn't very optimistic about IA's chances in court. I know they're going to appeal, but I'm not holding my breath. But if they're forced to stop lending books, they'll be sorely missed. Losing their treasure trove of knowledge will be a huge blow globally.

If highly recommend this book to anyone who's interested in the topics of feminism, women's rights and Islam. It skillfully circumvents the Western tendencies to either paint all Muslim women as oppressed doormats and all Muslim men as patriarchal brutes, as well as the tendency sometimes seen in more liberal spaces to refuse to acknowledge the religious oppression of women in Arabic countries entirely. And it does it while being an accessible and beautifully written memoir, rather than a dry academic text!

This book broadened my perspective so much by mentioning Muslim feminist thinkers (male and female) that I'd never heard of before. (This is the sort of book in which you do NOT skip the footnotes.) While Mernissi is a little child who feels the pressure to fulfill her mother's wish to be "a modern woman", most of the other characters are her family members of an older generation. Divorced women, women who live in a harem, are concubines, or former enslaved people. Though largely illiterate, they are smart and self-possessed, and they crave stories about Muslim women with more freedom and power than they have. Some of the most interesting and strong women in the book are the nine wives/concubines of Mernissi's grandfather.

There's a lot of passages that feel like little covert critiques of the space Western (especially second wave) feminism affords to sensuality, beauty, romance, polygamy (she's not a fan) and magic and that's very valuable too.

It's a funny coincidence, I ended my year with a book written by a female Moroccan author, and I started it with a book of poems from another Moroccan woman. She was probably about two decades old when Mernissi was born, so their lives overlapped too. I'm definitely going to review her work, too. It's just too interesting to not talk about.

My new train-read! Anja Meulenbelt is probably the Netherlands' most well-known and controversial author of the second wave feminist movement, and I read my mom's copy of her debut novel as a teen. So, when I found this book in a little free library I had to pick it up. A semi-autobiographical novel about the titulair character's unsuccesful attempt at a polyamorous relationship with her long-time girlfriend and new beau, a man. Rather than implode dramatically, what I can tell from the first few chapters is that the love simply slowly peters out due to petty jealousies and logistics. As I remember her from her other novel, the tone is conversational, wry.* A friend talking through her love life over coffee. Fun little detail: almost every character in this book seems to have cats, and Meulenbelt never neglects to update us on where their loyalties lie, haha. She knows her audience, because, yes, I would like to know the cats' opinion in all this.

*On the back cover: "Is there love after feminism? We're an improbable couple. He's a man, I am a woman. That's already quite a handicap for any decent relationship."

"Let the Right One In" is essentially a horror book combined with a Scandinavian thriller. And if you've ever read one of those, you know how bleak they can be, with this one no exception. This book is one of the bleakest and, strangely, most realistic vampire stories I've ever come across.

The rules of vampirism that Lindqvist decided on are on the strict side of the spectrum, and he handwaves nothing to make Eli fit better into society, like many other vampire media does in order to tell the story they want to tell. No fake blood substitutes, no constantly cloudy skies, not even the idea of vampires as a different, superior species which is so often used to explain why they're not morally conflicted over drinking blood. In fact, in this story, there are very few vampires because most of them end up killing themselves out of guilt. So, there are no grand vampire parallel societies, and the dietary needs of only one - Eli - turn an entire city up on its head as in a short span of time multiple bodies turn up drained of blood.
Even immortality and superpowers don't really seem to weigh up against the deeply lonely and fearful life this results in for Eli, who is forced to ally herself with a pedophile in order to keep up enough of a facade of normalcy to avoid detection.

It's this bleakness, however, that makes the relationship between Oskar and Eli so touching. They're both lonely, abused, ashamed of their bodies and linked with violence - Eli is violent to survive, Oskar is fascinated by it and fantasizes about killing his bullies. They are outcasts and victims, but not innocent. They both have monstrous elements to them. Yet, despite all the horror that surrounds it, and results from it, the love they have for each other, the acceptance they find with each other, is pure and good. Even if it eventually ends up drawing Oskar into the same lonely life of murder and fugitivism as Eli.