This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

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Source ISBN: 9780007564019

Version: 2015-01-13

Dedication

To Jonathan Galassi, whom I owe not only for this novel, but for a life.

The envy of any housewife up to her ears in dish towels and phone bills, the women of the Lone-luk had their water carried, their children watched and wiped, their meals prepared and their plates cleaned, while they sat in judgment, sculpted and wove, led religious services, and oversaw the production of goods for trade. However, one could recognize in them, as in equivalent patriarchal oppressors, the cold boredom of domination.

GRAY KAISER,

Ladies of the Lone-luk, 1955

Il-Ororen thought they were it. Yet they did not have the celebratory abandon of a culture that saw itself as the pinnacle of creation; rather, they were a sour, even embittered lot. If these were all the people in the world, then people were not so impressive.

… I have wondered if they took Charles in as readily as they did because they were lonely.

GRAY KAISER,

Il-Ororen: Men without History, 1949

I remember, in a rare moment of simple dispassionate clarity toward the end with Ralph, she said to me, “You win and you lose; you lose and you lose; you lose.”

“Some choice,” I said.

She was a beautiful woman, and she was tired.

ERROL MCECHERN,

American Warrior: The Life of Gray Kaiser, 2032

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