The Whole Woman [Paperback]

For women born in the immediate post-war period there were the years BG and AG--"before Greer" and "after Greer". It's all too easy to underestimate its influence, but the fact is that in 1970 every self-respecting woman on the Left owned a copy of The Female Eunuch. Greer's book broke the ground that women of today stand on--her unique stance combined outrageous humour and assertiveness to lead the way forward for women who wanted to take control of their lives.

Thirty years later in The Whole Woman, Greer is ready to get angry again. Picking up where she left off, she analyses the invasive ways in which the health industry persuades women into having their bodies and reproductive systems "managed". Greer lays out the facts about the high failure rate and devastating side effects of in vitro fertilisation, and the incongruity between the "success" of breast implants in achieving the "perfect" mammary to please men and the continuing failures in detecting and treating increasingly prevalent breast cancer.

Greer's polemic has the confident virtuosity of wit and maturity. Celebrating women's successes, The Whole Woman is a more positive book than The Female Eunuch. Yet again, Greer has put her head above parapets others still fear to scale, and looked into the realities of the present as well as the possibilities for the future for the whole of women's lives. --Lisa Jardine.

"'Into the pale politeness of post-feminism, Greer has thrown a polemical bomb... Greer's acid anger comes as a surprising reminder of what the point of a feminist book was meant to be. It is funny, unforgiving, unapologetic, unappeasing.' - Decca Aitkenhead, Guardian 'Don't underestimate this book. Its power, like that of The Female Eunuch, lies in the virtuosity and wit of its questions. Its capacity will force us to stop and think.' - Lisa Jardine, Observer 'Three cheers for Greer... She makes every other feminist writer look like pallid fast food, devoid of vitamins and roughage.' - Lesley Garner, Evening Standard 'This is a serious book which it is impossible to be neutral about.' - Gemma Hussey, Irish Independent" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Thirty years since the publication of The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer returns to the subject of feminism - with the book she always vowed she would never write. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Germaine Greer proclaims that the time has come to get angry again! Modern feminism has become the victim of unenlightened complacency, and what started out in the Sixties as a movement for liberation has become one that has sought and settled for equality. With fiery rhetoric, authoritative insight, outrageous humour and broad-ranging debate, Greer shows that, although women have indeed come a very long way in the last thirty years, the notion of our 'having it all' has disguised the persistent discrimination and exploitation that continues to exist for women in the basic areas of health, sex, politics, economics and marketing. Erudite, eccentric, provocative and invigorating, Germaine Greer once again sets the agenda for the future of feminism as the millennium draws to a close. Here is all the polemical power that sold over a million copies of The Female Eunuch and kept its author at the heart of controversy ever since. The announcement in February 1998 that this book was coming was enough to send the world's media into a frenzied spin of speculation: The Whole Woman will be required reading for thinking adults everywhere.

Reviving the debate she launched with The Female Eunuch, in thirty-five self-contained 'chapterkins' of fiery rhetoric, authoritative insight, outrageous humour and broad-ranging enquiry, Germaine Greer once again sets the agenda for the future of feminism, arguing that in spite of a widespread feeling of complacency, the woman question is far from answered.

Germaine Greer
Dr Germaine Greer's books include The Female Eunuch, The Obstacle Race, Sex and Destiny, The Madwoman's Underclothes, Daddy,We Hardly Knew You, The Change and Slip-shod Sibyls. She is currently Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick University.