This was a weird book. My first time reading Angela Carter, too. Published in 1969, 10 years before The Bloody Chamber, it is a post-apocalyptic story in which, after nuclear war, the surviving people have split into 3 categories; the Professors, the educated who have become the leaders (and within their societies we have the Soldiers and the Workers), the Barbarians, travellers before the war who raid Professor villages, (cont. in comments 👇🏻)