The Naked Woman

The first English-translated work of the late Somers (1914–1994) is a momentous allegorical tale of power and lust from 1950 that remains relevant in 2018. On her 30th birthday, the sullen Rebeca Linke leaves her home, hops on a train, and travels to a cottage deep within the wilderness, where she strips nude and tries to cut off her own head. Surviving this self-inflicted attack, she reattaches her cranium, sheds her “conventional consciousness,” and wanders the nearby fields and forests. Cut by tree branches while moving through the forest, Rebeca’s nude form inspires a dangerous lust in the men who catch glimpses of it. Rebeca passes through a secluded house in the woods, and her presence arouses the woodsman inside—who, after she leaves, rapes his wife. Later, a pair of farmers flee when they spy her and spread word of her existence through a local village. Soon, the village men form a mob, determined to find the naked woman skirting the trees, and a misogynistic frenzy of violence and sexual envy erupts. This short yet undeniably powerful take on the viciousness of the male ego exposes the soft underbelly of “civil society,” showing that just beneath the surface is man’s base animal nature. Somers’s novel is a surreal, gripping experience. (Nov.)