Kennedy & Boyd - Not By Bread Alone

Home | Catalogue | Order | About

Not By Bread Alone


	Naomi Mitchison. With an introsduction by Grace Borland Sinclair
	ISBN 9781849210515
	SERIES The Naomi Mitchison Library
	Paperback 180 pages

	Published April 2022 UK Price £15.95 US Price $22.95
In 1983, at the age of 86, Naomi Mitchison published Not By Bread Alone. Sixty years had passed since the publication of Mitchison’s first novel, The Conquered (1923). As a lifelong advocate of socialism and feminism, Mitchison draws upon the speculative imaginary in Not By Bread Alone to put forward and strategise political concerns which remain uncomfortably pertinent. The narrative transports us to a now not-so-distant future, where a powerful multinational corporation is close to producing free food for the entire world. It follows a group of scientists spread across continents, working on early GMOs. Their research is funded by the PAX corporation which (like its real-world counterpart) represents the global economic hegemony. Whilst their ‘Freefood’ policy may appear initially beneficial, the genetically modified crops soon start to present major problems. The scientists of the novel must learn from the people of Murngin, who reject PAX’s Freefood and instead uphold a symbiotic connection to their land, before it is too late. Mitchison viewed the problems raised by the question of GM crops extremely seriously. She characterised the disastrous consequences of something going wrong with a global single-strain crop supply not as science fiction but as something that might really happen. In 1983, the same year the novel was published, the world succeeded in producing the first genetically modified plant. It would be decades before the production of GM crops became as widespread as Mitchison envisioned and indeed, it remains to be seen whether humankind is prepared to heed her warnings.

Naomi Mitchison [1897-1999] was a literary phenomenon.
Tireless in her writing, unafraid and often highly unconventional in her opinions, she left an extraordinary legacy.
Her novels for adults and children - based on the classical ancient world, and on the immediately contemporary - stressed at different times her deep interest in Scottish and African societies, as well her concerns for the future.
She also wrote poetry and plays, memoirs, a war diary, book reviews, political articles, and many letters.