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The Birth of Love

Joanna Kavenna

Vienna1865: Dr Ignaz Semmelweis has been hounded into a lunatic asylum, ridiculed for his claim that doctors' unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. The deaths of thousands of mothers are on his conscience and his dreams are filled with blood.
2153: humans are birthed and raised in breeding centres, nurtured by strangers and deprived of familial love. Miraculously, a woman conceives, and Prisoner 730004 stands trial for concealing it.
London in 2009: Michael Stone's novel about Semmelweis has been published, after years of rejection. But while Michael absorbs his disconcerting success, his estranged mother is dying and asks to see him again. As Michael vacillates, Brigid Hayes, exhausted and uncertain whether she can endure the trials ahead, begins the labour of her second child.

A beautifully constructed and immensely powerful work about motherhood that is also a story of rebellion, isolation and the damage done by rigid ideologies.

  • Classification : General & Literary Fiction
  • Pub Date : MAY 5, 2011
  • Imprint : Faber Fiction
  • Page Extent : 320
  • Binding : PB
  • ISBN : 9780571245185
  • Price : INR 999
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Joanna Kavenna

Joanna Kavenna's novels include Inglorious, The Birth of Love, A Field Guide to Reality and Zed. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, Esquire and Zoetrope, among other publications. She was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2013., Joanna Kavenna is the author of several works of fiction and non-fiction including The Ice Museum, Inglorious, The Birth of Love and A Field Guide to Reality. Her short stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the LRB, the New Scientist, the Guardian and the New York Times. In 2008 she won the Orange Prize for New Writing, and in 2013 she was named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists.

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