Hermaphrodeity

Alan H. Friedman

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Hermaphrodeity won the nomination for the National Book Award. Androgyny is destiny. "Miss, you're also a boy!" a gynecologist harrumphs in Hermaphrodeity, a grand comedy of gender surprises. Boy or girl--choose one. Millie or Willie. This legendary autobiography of M. W. Niemann is a comic epic of sex, a subversive saga of love. The mythic author's double-trouble organs--female and male both--inspire a battle, inch by inch, from sensitive girlhood to tough punk in a boys gang, from geeky Harvard Man to alluring mistress of scientists and scions, from underage physicist to stone age archaeologist, from father-motherhood to fertility goddess, from hunted freedom fighter to visionary tycoon, from infamous prisoner accused of treason...to celebrated winner of the Nobel Prize in Poetry. These are the taboo confessions of a literary titan, a poet who pursued science, politics, and wealth. Even Divinity. Brilliant and learned, Hermaphrodeity romps through the disputed geography of sex until Millie/Willie, embodying the life force, plumbs the ultimate secret of manwomankind.