Mercy

FOUR WALLS EIGHT WINDOWS

NEW YORK

Copyright © 1990, 1991 by Andrea Dworkin.

A F o u r Wa l l s E ig h t W in d o w s F i r s t E d it io n .

First Printing August, 1991.

First paperback printing September, 1992.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmit ed in any form, by any means, including

mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the prior writ en permission of the publisher.

Excerpts from this novel have appeared in
The Michigan Quarterly

Review,
Vol. XXIX, No. 4, Fall 1990 and
The American Voice
,

No. 21, Winter 1990.

Mercy
was first published

in Great Britain by Seeker & Warburg in 1990.

The author and publisher are grateful to the fol owing for

permission to quote from copyright material: Olwyn Hughes for

“Daddy, ” in
Collected Poems
by Sylvia Plath, published by Harper

& Row, Publishers, © 1965 1981; Pantheon for Anna Cancogni’s

translation of
Sartre: A Life
by Annie Cohen-Solal, © 1987

Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dworkin, Andrea.

Mercy: a novel / Andrea Dworkin.

p.

cm.

I. Title.

PS3554. W85M4 1991

813'. 54—dc20

91-18157

(Cloth) ISBN: 0-941423-69-7

CIP

(Paper) ISBN: 0-941423-88-3

Four Wal s Eight Windows

P. O. Box 548, Village Station

New York, N. Y 10014

Printed in the U. S. A.

F o r Judith Malina

For Michael M oorcock

In M em ory o f Ellen Frankfort

D addy, daddy, you bastard, I’ m through.

“ D ad d y, ” Sylvia Plath

For a small moment have I forsaken

thee; but with great mercies will I gather

thee.

In a little wrath I hid my face from

thee for a moment; but with everlasting

kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith

the Lord thy Redeemer.

Isaiah 54: 7-8