The Birth of Love -

Joanna Kavenna

Faber and Faber

2010

309 páginas

10h 18m

ISBN-13: 9780571245178

In Vienna in 1865, Dr Ignaz Semmelweis has been hounded into an asylum by his medical peers, ridiculed for his claim that doctors’ unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. In present-day London, Bridget Hayes juggles the needs of her young son, husband, and mother as she plans her home birth, unprepared for the trial she is about to endure. Somewhere in 2153, in a world where humans are birthed and raised in breeding farms, Prisoner 730004 is on trial for concealing a pregnancy.

From three perspectives spanning centuries, this novel explores childbirth, the most basic experience of women and men, from the slaughterhouse of primitive medicine to a futuristic vision of technological oppression. The Birth of Love is a powerful novel of science and faith, madness and compromise, and the epic journey of motherhood.