Merle's vision of the near future is equally shocking and entertaining: A government of women, a long-standing theme that has persisted from ancient literature to the present, spans from mythology to the science fiction genre. However, Merle situates it for the first time in a completely new and unusual position and in a very specific geographical and historical reality. The hero of the novel, Martinelli, experiences the government of women firsthand, barely escaping with his life, yet the author did not want to write and did not write an anti-feminist work. Women merely represent the dangers that have threatened human society since time immemorial. A peculiar encephalitis appears in the USA, affecting only men and giving them, if they survive, a choice – either castration or persecution of all kinds. Martinelli is a doctor working on a vaccine serum, living with other experts in a research institute that resembles a concentration camp, and is one of the few 'men under protection' in a state where women have taken over the government and produced anti-male racism. After a series of events, which the author depicts with appropriate vividness, in a society still dominated by women, but no longer by anti-male racism, a new life begins in official polygamy turned upside down, in which the author already senses the possibility of reconstituting relationships based on love,…
