Shrinking Goddess: Power, Myth and the Female Body

‘Scholarly but compulsively readable, packed with jaw-dropping detail. I found myself telling stories from Schipper’s strange treasury for weeks after I read it.’ --The Observer

‘This is a vital cultural study. Forensically researched, The Shrinking Goddess explores the representations – and misrepresentations – of women’s bodies via global art works, texts, myths and proverbs. It opens the reader alongside its pages, offering an education, a reason, a deep knowing and a path out of here. World changing work.’ --Joelle Taylor, Winner of the T.S Eliot Prize for Poetry

‘Schipper’s prose is light, fast-paced and witty, and her analysis is completely gripping.’ --Sunday Telegraph

‘Mineke Schipper provides a fascinating and wide-ranging compendium of fact and fiction through the ages.’ --J.M Coetzee

Groundbreaking.' --Jasmine Elmer

‘Mineke Schipper draws on a lifetime’s study of stories and proverbs across the world to chart the ways in which ideas about women, creation and power have deployed over time. Fascinating … Schipper is on solid ground when she talks about the ancient world, equatorial Africa or China: the evidence she marshals is convincing and often remarkable.’ --TLS