The Divide [ARC paperback] by Alan Ayckbourn

Not so long ago, let it not be forgotten, as decreed by The Preacher, Men and Women lived apart on separate sides of the Divide in segregated isolation.

The celebrated novelist Soween Clay-Flin recalls this period in recent history based on documents of the period, including her own personal diary as a young girl who lived through it and survived to tell the tale. In the aftermath of a deadly contagion which has decimated the population, contact between men and women has become fatal. Under the dictates of an unseen authoritarian leader known as The Preacher, an unthinkable solution has been enforced. Soween and her older brother Elihu grow up learning the ways of their tightly controlled society Then to Soween s alarm, Elihu, as he reaches pubescence, risks not only fatal disease but also threatens to ignite a bloody revolution.

The Divide is a fable for our own turbulent times that unflinchingly examines a dystopian society of brutal repression, forbidden love and seething insurrection.