Beatrice the Sixteenth

A pioneering feminist adventure in an alternate world—before the concept of gender.

Introduced by Lucy Sante, author of the acclaimed memoir of transition I Heard Her Call My Name, this pioneering 1909 feminist utopia is productively discombobulating. 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, 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.