Eleven Percent

De: Maren Uthaug, Caroline Waight - translator

Narrado por: Cassandra Campbell

An inverse The Handmaid’s Tale that asks: What if women took over the world?

"Emotionally enthralling and intellectually stimulating."—Booklist

It is the New Time, a time not so different from our own except that the men are gone. All but eleven percent of them, that is, the minimum required to avoid inbreeding. But they are safely under lock and key in “spa” centers for women’s pleasure (trained by amazons to fulfill all desires) and procreation. A few women protest that the males should be treated better–more space, better food, but all agree that testosterone cannot be allowed to roam free. The old patriarchal cities are crumbling, becoming overgrown; people now live in “round communities.” But if you prefer the slum, that’s okay too. Religion has survived, sort of: women priestesses speak in tongues, inspired by snake venom, as apples are passed around to the congregation. But all social engineering has its costs...

Four different lives intersect: Medea, a tiny, long-haired witch and snake whisperer; Wicca, a young priestess who excelled at the “self-pleasuring” curriculum in school and has lost her pregnant lover; Eva, a doctor working in a spa center, and Silence, who lives in an almost abandoned convent. Each will discover the cracks in this women's paradise.

Provocative, irreverent, and completely riveting, Eleven Percent—a #1 bestseller in Denmark—is the first novel to appear in English by celebrated Danish author Maren Uthaug.

©2022; 2025 Maren Uthaug; English Translation: Caroline Waight (P)2025 Recorded Books

I had to see it to the end...

I first saw this title in a book store and loved the idea of the synopsis. I was intrigued to see how the author brought the plot together and boy was I not expecting what was unearthed throughout this story.
I'm not opposed to gender bending, witchy, weird stuff and animal kinship but this took it to a whole new level and felt like whiplash from one quirky thing to the next.

In this day and age, it felt almost like an AI enhanced story; Give a topic prompt and let the computer spit out the detail because it was mediocre in detail, and maybe tweaked a little by human spirit.
The story, as a whole, flowed well enough, and the characters had their own spotlights that wove together fine, the antics and actions of the characters were just not well identified and felt like choas bomb after chaos bomb.

If you've got the time, energy, and don't shy away from the dietary usage of bodily fluids this might be a good listen... Definitely something to shock your friends with but I wouldn't recommend as a MUST read... Good luck, listeners.