The Feminist Book Club 5

08.02.2024

Anna Burns: Milkman, 2018.

8. 2. 2024. 

We are dedicating half of the first season of the Feminist Book Club to the selection of winners of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, which has been awarded since 2019. In February, we read the first winner of this prize, the novel Milkman by Anna Burns. Milkman was also awarded the Man Booker Award 2018, the National Book Critics Circle Award 2018 and the International Dublin Literary Award 2020. Details of the Orwell Prize categories can be found at: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-prizes/about/about-the-prizes/ 

Anna Burns is an Irish writer (born 1962 in Belfast, Northern Ireland), author of the novels No Bones, Little Constructions and Milkman, all three of which deal with the theme of growing up during the Northern Ireland conflict.

At the book club session we discussed a number of issues raised by the novel: the socio-political context of the novel's plot, the way this context breaks down in gender relations and male and female roles, the expectations faced by the novel's narrator and protagonist, the way political circumstances affect her relationship with Milkman, the understanding and definition of male violence, the victim blaming argument... One of the most important questions we have discussed is: does the protagonist have a choice? What makes her stand out in her socio-political environment? What kind of treatment does the feminist organization receive there? And what motifs link this novel to Orwell's 1984?

Find out more about the novel at: https://www.caponeu.eu/cdp/novels/milkman 

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