The Book of Joan
First edition, 2017
The Book of Joan (2017) by Lidia Yuknavitch is a post-apocalyptic feminist novel set in 2049, in the aftermath of war and environmental collapse. Survivors have retreated to CIEL, an orbital colony now ruled by Jean de Men, a former media celebrity turned military dictator. On the devastated Earth below, a resistance fighter named Joan possesses a mysterious elemental connection to the planet, while aboard CIEL a dissident artist named Christine records Joan's story by grafting it into her own skin. Reworking the legends of Joan of Arc and the medieval poet Christine de Pizan into an environmental and feminist dystopia, Yuknavitch's novel is unapologetically direct, angry, and grotesque in a manner difficult to stomach, and yet tough to look away from.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth-backed boards with silver lettering on spine. New York: Harper, 2017. ISBN: 9780062383273. #11336.
Fine in fine dust jacket.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth-backed boards with silver lettering on spine. New York: Harper, 2017. ISBN: 9780062383273. #11336.
Fine in fine dust jacket.
Additional Details
The Book of Joan is a post-apocalyptic feminist novel set in 2049, after war and environmental collapse have rendered Earth largely uninhabitable. The wealthy and powerful have fled to CIEL, a vast orbital colony, having been told it represented humanity's salvation. In practice it was an escape route for the privileged, and it is now ruled by Jean de Men, a former self-help celebrity and media personality who has reinvented himself as a military dictator. Radiation and environmental catastrophe have radically altered the bodies of CIEL's inhabitants, stripping them of reproductive capacity and most gender characteristics, conditions Jean de Men's regime exploits as tools of control.
On the ruined Earth below, a resistance fighter named Joan has emerged with a mysterious, elemental connection to the planet itself. Aboard CIEL, a dissident artist named Christine is burning Joan's story into her own skin through grafting, the colony's primary form of writing and art. For Christine, telling Joan's story and burning it into her skin are the same act.
The title draws on two historical figures. Joan represents Joan of Arc, the military visionary condemned as a heretic. Christine takes her name from Christine de Pizan, the medieval poet who actually wrote about Joan of Arc, and who here becomes the archivist of a new legend inscribed on her own body. The body is very much the focus of this often uncomfortable and gruesome story. Yuknavitch's depictions of sexuality and bodily mutilation are graphic and deliberately shocking, and the novel is as much about the destruction of the human body as it is about the destruction of the planet.
The novel's treatment of gender is more complicated than simple loss. The collapse of the old binary is presented as catastrophic in origin, but Yuknavitch's sympathies seem to lie with the idea that rigid sexual duality was always a limitation. Jean de Men's real dystopian achievement is finding new hierarchies and humiliations to impose on bodies that no longer fit the old categories. Marguerite Duras, quoted in the epigraph, puts it plainly: "Heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire. It kills the other story options." Yuknavitch never states her own position outright, but the novel seems to make clear where her sympathies lie.
On the ruined Earth below, a resistance fighter named Joan has emerged with a mysterious, elemental connection to the planet itself. Aboard CIEL, a dissident artist named Christine is burning Joan's story into her own skin through grafting, the colony's primary form of writing and art. For Christine, telling Joan's story and burning it into her skin are the same act.
The title draws on two historical figures. Joan represents Joan of Arc, the military visionary condemned as a heretic. Christine takes her name from Christine de Pizan, the medieval poet who actually wrote about Joan of Arc, and who here becomes the archivist of a new legend inscribed on her own body. The body is very much the focus of this often uncomfortable and gruesome story. Yuknavitch's depictions of sexuality and bodily mutilation are graphic and deliberately shocking, and the novel is as much about the destruction of the human body as it is about the destruction of the planet.
The novel's treatment of gender is more complicated than simple loss. The collapse of the old binary is presented as catastrophic in origin, but Yuknavitch's sympathies seem to lie with the idea that rigid sexual duality was always a limitation. Jean de Men's real dystopian achievement is finding new hierarchies and humiliations to impose on bodies that no longer fit the old categories. Marguerite Duras, quoted in the epigraph, puts it plainly: "Heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire. It kills the other story options." Yuknavitch never states her own position outright, but the novel seems to make clear where her sympathies lie.