Alex in Femiland

BACK COVER SUMMARY Alex is a sarcastic South American research physicist who moves from Harvard to teach at The Sound College, south of Seattle, so as to be near his young son. It is 1989, when political correctness is beginning to take over campuses nationwide, setting aside such technicalities as due process and freedom of speech. Alex makes fun of the cult of victimhood, which makes him a target of the Sound political activists, who consider him a traitor because his behavior is unbecoming of a person of color. Soon, they bring him up on false charges of sexual harassment, a favorite weapon of feminists against professors who oppose them. His students, though, stand by him; and he bests Maria, the Affirmative Action officer, who has led a ludicrous investigation. The next time around, however, he is not so fortunate. Alex has fallen in love with a former student, Linda, a glorious affair interrupted by the canonizing of Anita Hill as the matron saint of the Left. Two women, motivated by spite and jealousy, bring new sexual harassment accusations against Alex. With practically the whole Sound College against him, the upcoming new farcical "investigation" is certain to destroy Alex's life. One more step in the takeover of academia, and then of the nation. Few writers today are prepared to confront political correctness and what passes for progressive ideals. Here is a bold exception that focuses on life and morality in a modern university campus and exposes the totalitarian nature of PC, culminating in a modern tragedy about the perversion of education and human relations. This is a story of our time, with a warning for the future. (Prof. David Lamb, University of Manchester) A gripping page-turner that offers a troubling window into the crazy, ideological culture of the modern American academic world. (Prof. Michael Huemer, University of Colorado) An insightful look at the dramatic contrast between real education and politically correct indoctrination on the American campus. (Prof. Ainara Wilder, the Evergreen State College) A penetrating and very funny novel that makes its most telling points against sexual and political correctness by showing rather than declaring, by letting us see rather than telling us what we are seeing. With understated, tongue-in-cheek wit, in the fashion of Cervantes and Swift, the scenes build, oh so logically, into widening whirlpools of rollicking absurdity. What lifts this Gulliverian journey into academia is its delicious writing. I savored every paragraph. Alex in Femiland is a work of art (Prof. Sheldon Reaven, Stony Brook University) 219