The Biggest Modern Women in the World

First published in 1983, The Biggest Modern Woman of the World was a finalist for the Governor General`s Award for fiction and the Smith`s Best First Novel Award. In this reissue you will find a new Afterword written by the author. In this exhilirating and profound novel, Anna Swan, the real-life 7?6?, 413-pound Nova Scotian Giantess renders her own autobiographical account. Born in 1846 (an 18 pound baby) to a family of crofters, Anna Swan had to sit on the floor as a child so that her head would be level with her siblings at the dinner table. Searching for a home that fits, Anna Swan first goes from Nova Scotia to New York, where P.T. Barnum bills her, at his museum of freaks, as The Biggest Modern Woman of the World. Worn down by P.T. Barnum`s museum fires, she goes from New York to Europe and then to a giant farmhouse in the American mid-west, where she hopes to live out the rest of her life like a Victorian lady. Part truth, part legend, The Biggest Modern Woman of the World is a saucy romp through the traditional categories of gender, art, sexuality and nationality. There never has been a story quite like it. (2001)


Genre: Literary Fiction