The Fortress
“One of the decades best books” Better Reading
“[A]n imaginative exploration of the contours and confines of patriarchy, and what might lay beyond them, as immersive and thought-provoking as the fiction of Ursula Le Guin” Sydney Morning Herald
“This chilling, challenging, sexually explicit work of speculative fiction explores and eviscerates aspects of patriarchal thinking. It is powerfully written and I suspect that it will be widely read, and that responses to it will be widely divergent” Newtown Review of Books
“Stunning, speculative novel, equal parts entertaining and moving, and one of the first books I’ve encountered with truly autonomous female characters.” Angela Meyer, author A Superior Spectre and Joan Smokes, and editor
Jonathon Bridge’s arrival at The Fortress – a society run and populated by women – begins with a recitation of the conditions of his stay: he is forbidden to ask questions, to raise his hand in anger, and to refuse sex.
Jonathon has offered himself as a supplicant in The Fortress after his pregnant wife Adalia discovered the ugly sexual violence pervading his top-tier firm. She has agreed to continue their fractured relationship on the condition he enter The Fortress for one year.
Jonathon is utterly unprepared for what will happen to him over the course of the year – not only to his body, but his mind and his heart.
This absorbing, confronting and moving novel asks questions about consent, power, love and fulfilment. It asks what it takes for a man to change, and whether change is possible without a radical reversal of the conditions that seem normal.
Released in Australia by Echo/Allen and Unwin and internationally by Erewhon Publishing.
This book is also available in audio format.
Links
https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-fortress/
https://www.theqwillery.com/2020/03/interview-with-s-jones-author-of.html
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2020/03/18/the-big-idea-s-a-jones/
https://www.betterreading.com.au/podcast/podcast-the-matriarchal-zone-with-s-a-jones/
