Now, women's ideas are the center, and they get to make a man write them down. 'Women Talking' reverses the patriarchal structure under which these women live. She wants the meeting recorded for posterity, and in Molotschna, only men can learn to read and write. Ona Friesen, who belongs to the middle generation, in turn invites the town outcast, August Epp, to serve as scribe. Each family brings a mother, two adult daughters, and a teenage daughter or niece to the negotiations, which take place in a dementia-addled farmer's barn. The women delegate this unbearable choice to two families, the Friesens and the Loewens.

the women will have to leave the colony for the outside world.' Peters, the colony's monstrous bishop, has had the rapists arrested to protect them from the women's rage, then issued an ultimatum: 'When the perpetrators return, the women of Molotschna will be given the opportunity to forgive these men, thus guaranteeing everybody's place in heaven.

Toews opens her novel after the rapes have been discovered. And, surprisingly given the title, Women Talking is narrated by a man. Women Talking is 'both a reaction through fiction to these true-life events, and an act of female imagination.' It is also a work of deep moral intelligence, a master class in ethics beautifully dressed as a novel. Between 20, she explains, eight men in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia raped many of the girls and women in their community, first rendering them unconscious with cow anesthetic. The Canadian writer Miriam Toews opens her astonishing eighth novel, Women Talking, with a matter-of-fact Author's Note. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Women Talking Author Miriam Toews

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