The Penguin Book of Erotic Stories by Women - Softcover

Susan Williams is an historian and author of many books, most recently Spies in the Congo. The Race for the Ore that Built the Atomic Bomb (2016) and Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (2011), which triggered a new UN investigation in 2015 into the death of the Secretary General. She grew up in Zambia and has worked in Britain, Zimbabwe and Canada. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

The editors of The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women join forces again, this time turning their selective eyes to more earthy considerations. Here are 31 tales, spanning 103 years and encompassing six continents, arranged in chronological order. With a compilation that includes such diverse authors as Edith Wharton and Kathy Acker, it's a safe bet that each reader will find some of these tales titillating, others curious and still others repulsive. Among the more intriguing offerings is Danish author Siv Holm's "I, a Woman," in which a woman, choosing multiple fantasies over conventional marriage, posits that civilization and humanity are polar opposites. In Svetlana Boym's "Romances of the Era of Stagnation," an emigre returns to Russia, wading through bureaucracy while queuing for information on two former loves. The adulteress in Elizabeth Cook's "Billets Doux," finding the mark of a wife on her lover's person, competitively decides to leave her own. The curious entries tend to focus on fetishes: Czech-born Iva Pekarkova's "Truck Stop" ends with a virtual paean to sperm; Yuan Ch'iung Ch'iung's "A Lover's Ear" explores the erotic trust necessary for cleaning a beloved's ears. Some of the most imaginative pieces come from those writers with an SF and/or fantasy background (L.A. Hall, Joanna Russ). Head and shoulders above the rest is Carol Emshwiller's whimsical "Sex and/or Mr. Morrison," in which a female being (alien?) eats Fig Newtons while sitting on a man's shoes in his closet, eagerly awaiting a peek at his pecker. Caveat emptor: Erotica is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
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