Handmaid of Desire

Olga Kominska, vain, feminist theorist with a shifting unplaceable accent, is newly arrived at a prestigious West Coast university, and instantly enlisted by Zachary Kurtz to deconstruct the English Department. When not secretly reading novels — for pleasure — Kurtz is scheming everyone's downfall. The players include Maddy Barker, star lesbian theorist and "gynocritic of nunneries in the fourteenth century"; Concepcion, who teaches "Chicana Lit" and "gender stuff'; and Professor Tortorisi, who is wrestling with his revolutionary novel that is without characters, narrative or plot. ("It's more like sculpture".) These characters all feature unwittingly in the mysterious Olga's plot to give them what they most desire. The result is a clever comedy of contemporary manners, power, lust, babies, and money.