Theodore Savage

British suffragette Hamilton (1873–1952) first published this scalding feminist dystopian novel in 1922. Susan R. Grayzel’s illuminating introduction contextualizes the story in the aftermath of WWI and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Indeed, this tale is all about the devastation of war. Life for the eponymous hero, once an art-admiring upper-middle-class clerk, is upended by scientifically advanced warfare, poison gas, and firebombs. Theodore weathers the aftermath with a naive and helpless woman, until their situation becomes untenable, and he leaves their isolated shelter to find civilization irrevocably changed: in the midst of mass hysteria and deep-rooted distrust of technology, humanity has formed into primitive hunter-gatherer tribes, with women treated especially abominably (and, in one dark scene, even begging for death). Theodore reluctantly joins but remembers his life before all too well. His thirst for the knowledge that destroyed his world earns him the fear and respect of his tribe and a reputation as a kind of amalgam of “Merlin, Frankenstein, and Adam.” Prescient both to Hamilton’s time and to the current moment of war, plague, and refugee crises, this novel deserves to be rediscovered. Readers will have much to chew on. (Feb.)