Eleven Percent

Uthaug, who is of Norwegian, Sami, and Danish descent, makes her English-language debut with a provocative dystopian tale of a world dominated by women, where biological males are kept sedated in spa centers and allowed to exist only for the purpose of procreation and women’s pleasure. The novel alternates among the viewpoints of four women. There’s Medea, a witch living in a small convent who keeps venomous snakes for elixirs and is secretly raising a male child she took in as an infant. Her lover, Christian priestess Wicca, uses Medea’s snakes in salvation rituals. Silence, a member of Medea’s convent, atones for her long-ago betrayal of a friend, while Eva, who works at one of the spa centers, harbors her own secret. After Medea’s boy, now seven, flees from the convent, the four women search for him, and Uthaug reveals the surprising connections between them. The speculative elements are peppered with bizarre and lurid details, such as an underclass of sex-worker “manladies” who sew toy penises onto their bodies, but readers will be immersed in this world by the time the satisfying conclusion rolls around. It’s an intriguing thought experiment about the consequences of gender oppression. (Apr.)