Description

Beatrice the Sixteenth by Irene Clyde

Paperback – MIT Press – March 2026 – 325 pages

When Mary Hatherley, an intrepid British explorer, is kicked in the head by the camel she was riding through the Arabian desert, she finds herself transported to what seems to be an alternate version of Earth. Arriving in Armeria, she discovers a society in which the very concept of gender is unknown. Like Mary, the reader will become disoriented, but enjoyably so: By avoiding the use of gendered pronouns, the story’s author–herself a gender-fluid activist–challenges our assumptions about gendered social paradigms.