Zulus

by Percival Everett

In the far distant future, Alice Achitophel, a government clerk, discovers that as the last woman alive who is not sterile, she poses a threat to the government

Genres: Fiction

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Percival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.

The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.”

Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.

Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991.

Reviews

[Jonathan K (Max Outlier) · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of his earliest stories, circa 1990, Everett dives into a dystopian arena with a story about an overweight woman who joins a group of rebels to find community where none existed previously. Everett jabs at society, religion and conservative mindsets with this story, but the pace and plot points were lackluster.

Alice Achitophel, a 260 pound woman, lives in a poverty stricken world of sterilized, distrustful people with a government that delves out cheese and little else for survival. When she's accosted by a strange man and raped, she assumes she's with child and seeks refuge with Theodore Theodore, a colleague. When word gets out she's pregnant, Theodore calls upon some rebel friends to help the two of them escape confrontation. They join forces with a small group who plan the escape to a 'normal' community where people are free of government oversight and have foods other than cheese. Simply put, Everett takes issue with organized religion, society and sex using a dystopian world as the foundation.

Having read most of Everett's current stories and loved them, it came as a surprise this earlier work lacked the humor, pacing and quirks that brought delight in recent stories. The only redeeming factor was some dark humor incorporated into the first segment and the oddball character names. I felt the overuse of 'he said, she said' etc felt amateurish having grown accustomed to fluidity and POV shifts in Telephone, Erasure and The Trees That said, he's one of if not the ONLY author who enjoys exploring genre, ideas, humor, society, character development and sarcasm and for that, I'm truly grateful.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took a bit to find a copy of this early novel, making it the last Everett book I had left to read by default. From the blurb-synops, I can’t say I expected much. Delightfully—and typically—I was wrong. Wrong as the rodeo (I dunno; I’ve got a headache I can’t see through).

Although the writing bears no similarities, there is something obliquely Pynchon at the core of this odd, shaggily lovable book. It’s not Science Fiction, or at least nowhere to the degree that one would suspect from the book’s obverse. It’s Everett having a very good time—for the FIRST time—and its romping, illogical heart is endearingly goofy.

Now: time to ship my copy to great Goodreader MJ, the gospel of PE setting sail from (literally) fiery Southern California all the way to the barren, mystical netherworld of Glasgow, Scots Land. (Birthplace of so MUCH great music inversely disproportionate to its relatively small population that I have no reason to doubt MJ’s often repeated claims of tartan-unicorns [Glaswegian: Unitarns] and trees that grow distortion pedals. Spread the word you believe in.)

Real rating: 4.44444444444444449

[Daniel LeSaint · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird. Unique. Apocalyptical in tone. Everything I look for in a book, yet it a felt a little…, I don’t know, incomplete. I sense I can relate to the protagonist through this underlying frustration with the lack of communication from the other characters in this book, but then no one ever talks in real life either, not really, so I suppose that is the point…maybe.

[Britt · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is by far the strangest book I have ever read. I would give it 3.5 cause I did finish the book. But that was a wild ride that I don’t know if I would take again.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really strange book, from early in Everett's career. Visionary is the best word to describe it. The story takes leaps that a reader may not be prepared to take unless he/she is interested in following an author's imagistic intuition. It sometimes feels as if Everett is mapping his subconscious, in a manner more often associated with poetry than with fiction. Most good novelists do it too, just less brazenly than here. In my opinion, it's worth the ride. The plot is post-apocalyptic, a bonus for me.

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early Everett. Definitely putting the dis in dystopia. In this darkly imagined future women are sterilized and the planet's population is more or less waiting to expire. There are rebels who seem to carve a marginal existence outside the City. And into their midst rumbles protagonist Alice Achitophel when she conceives. She never obeyed the sterility summons and is morbidly obese to boot. Raped by a stranger, she believes herself pregnant and is led to a rebel camp. There she blows up (literally) and a new Alice escapes from the rubble, leaving exploded body and head behind. That pretty much tells you what kind of a read you are in for. The chapters go alphabetically, like some cracked Edward Gorey (and that's pretty fucking cracked, if you think about it) machine where A stands for this, etc. Alice falls in love with a black man outside the rebels' orbit, who helps her escape their nefarious clutches when it seems they wish to use her and her progeny as brood mares for the future. And then it gets weird. This novel is genuinely strange in that it bends rules and warps what seems to be real. It is to Everett's credit that he manages to keep all these plates spinning, since in any newly imagined world, the easiest thing to do is lose readers when you start to reimagine the rules governing the fictional space. That this loss doesn't occur seems to be down to the incantatory power of Everett's prose to carry the reader along with Alice over all the formidable obstacles (real or imagined) toward the story's trippy (and apparently quite quite dark) conclusion. The novel as a whole seethes with imaginative and verbal energy, even if in the end it isn't entirely clear what Everett is after.

[David Clark · Rating 1 out of 5]

W is for wasting time. Wondering where the real 'meat' of the story is. Wishing the author didn't feel the need to narrate both the first and last names of every character every time they are mentioned.
W also is for wandering. Wandering along with Alice Achitophel as she struggles to find meaning for herself and for humanity in what (I think!) was a post-war/apocalyptic world.

I've read about half a dozen of Percival Everett's novels now and, I'm sorry to say, I'm just not a fan. If there is symbolism (which other reviews I have read say there is) I'm not seeing it. If there's humor, something he is often credited with, it is beyond my definition of 'funny.' The aforementioned overuse of every character's surnames became a distration and, considering two of the primary characters were Alice Achitophel and Theodore Theodore, at times had me wanting to rip my hair out by the roots.

Finally, the absolute fairest summary of this book, is to call it 'a mosaic' of the main character's life. Fortunately, as we near the end of the story, we are given this mosaic summary through the eyes of the main character. Ready?

*"...abandoned, fat, ostracized, raped, impregnated, flight, red, water, fear, love, disappointment, imprisoned, giant, insane, lost, inside, twisted, exploded, chased, hope, music, devil, friend, home, decapitated, hissing, death, urine, pills, paranoia, emptiness, winter, isolation, stench, baby, baby, baby, baby."*

Pretty confusing? Yes. Dramatic lack of detail? You bet. Did I mention that the ending of the book, consistent with the writer's habit, is a bit like stepping off a cliff without knowing *exactly* what's at the bottom? I did now.

[Stephan Benzkofer · Rating 3 out of 5]

For his fifth novel, Percival Everett tells an absurdist tale set in a post-apocalyptic future. It is a bleak place, where a totalitarian government is trying to hold society together after a nuclear war. Rebels hide outside the cities and lurk in the alleys, selling dodgy fruit when the citizenry can only get cheese and crackers and hot chocolate. I felt the symbolism weighing down on me, though it remained elusive when I turned my attention to it.

The novel felt very Russian, the faceless bureaucracy too vast to fight, the characters too siloed and community too broken to form any resistance. The characters' names reinforced the feeling, with alliteration and repetition: Alice Achitophel and Theodore Theodore, for example, and surnames used at every reference.

I can't argue this is a great novel (though see note about symbolism), but I can again marvel that Everett wrote without fear, artistically and maybe economically. He switched publishers (or they dumped him) as often as he jumped genres; he had four publishers in five novels and that doesn't count a book of short stories by a fifth publisher. (Maybe this wasn't uncommon in the 1980s and 1990s? Maybe this also wasn't uncommon for Black authors?)

[Danielle | Dogmombookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing style is a bit different. I think it was a bit longer than it needed to be and it felt more sci-fi mixed with magical realism than any of the other books I've read by him.

It's sometime in the future, a time when many humans have died from "an event," where humans are sterile. There's a limitation of supplies and food. Our MC, Alice Achitophel, is assaulted by a stranger right after she invited him into her home. She believes herself pregnant because she never forcibly sterilized like the other women. Thus begins our journey down the rabbit hole.

Only our Alice starts as a very large bodied woman and about half-way through, she breaks out of her form like Athena only through the body, and turns into a much slimmer version of herself while her larger form lays decaying on the ground. Side Note: it got a bit tedious hearing how large Alice was. On some pages it was mentioned 4-5 times which seemed really unnecessary.

The vibe of it felt like Margaret Atwood (think Oryx and Crake) mixed with 12 MONKEYS mixed with TWIN PEAKS.

It was a very strange book. Overall, I don't think it was quite successful, but it does escape categorization from all the other Everett books I've read.

[Jes Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Nina Foxx · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this early Percival Everett. We have a society where there are no children, no overweight people, women are sterilized by the government and everywhere exists on government cheese. And of course we have rebels. Everett writes a tale that will make you take a close look at humanity and what it means to be human.

[Miranda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Of all the eclectic weird books by Everett this is my least favorite so far, oh well.