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Naomi Alderman

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The Power Hardcover – October 10, 2017

by Naomi Alderman (Author)

27,174

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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In this stunning bestseller praised as "our era's Handmaid's Tale," a fierce new power has emerged—and only women have it (Washington Post).

In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family.

But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets. From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways.

"Captivating, fierce, and unsettling...I was riveted by every page. Alderman's prose is immersive and, well, electric." —New York Times Book Review

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Little, Brown and Company
Publication date

October 10, 2017
Dimensions

6 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0316547611
ISBN-13

978-0316547611
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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

Already there are parents telling their boys not to go out alone, not to stray too far.
Highlighted by 2,166 Kindle readers
Sometimes a bloke is better at that than a woman—less threatening; they’re better at diplomacy.
Highlighted by 1,784 Kindle readers
There’s a sort of constant ease, as if it’s high summer all the time inside her.
Highlighted by 1,652 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for THE POWER:

"Electrifying! Shocking! Will knock your socks off! Then you'll think twice, about everything."―Margaret Atwood

"Magnificent. I'm agog. I'm several gogs. Smart and scary and sad but true. It's a classic, in the way that it's hard to imagine it ever wasn't there."―Joss Whedon

"Alderman has written our era's Handmaid's Tale, and, like Margaret Atwood's classic, The Power is one of those essential feminist works that terrifies and illuminates, enrages and encourages....This book sparks with such electric satire that you should read it wearing insulated gloves."―Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Narratively complex, philosophically searching, and gorgeously rendered."―Lisa Shea, Elle

"Fierce and unsettling...Through immersive prose and a riveting plot, Alderman explores how power corrupts everyone: those who gain it, and those resisting its loss."―Radhika Jones, New York Times Book Review

"Richly imagined, ambitious, and propulsively written."―Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic

"Alderman's writing is beautiful, and her intelligence seems almost limitless. She also has a pitch-dark sense of humor that she wields perfectly."―Michael Schaub, NPR

"Alderman's tilted dystopia is a smartly layered place of slippery slopes and moral ambiguities, a fitting folktale for strange times."―Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

"I was riveted by every page. Alderman's prose is immersive and, well, electric, and I felt a closed circuit humming between the book and me as I read."―Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times Book Review

"An instant classic of speculative fiction... Smart, readable and joyously achieved."
―Justine Jordan, Guardian

"Bold and disturbing...it's not just a book of the moment. The Power is a major innovation in the overlapping genres of feminist dystopia/utopia, science fiction, and speculative fiction."―Elaine Showalter, New York Review of Books

"Fans of speculative fiction (see also: Margaret Atwood and Ben Marcus) about empowered youth will be struck by Alderman's speedy and thorough inhabitation of a world just different enough from ours to jolt the imagination. Mothers, lock up your boys."―Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair

"Alderman has the daring and good sense to eschew go-girl uplift in favor of terrifying and complex dystopia."―Boris Kachka, Vulture/ New York Magazine

"A suspenseful thrill ride filled with deep, contrasting female leads on a scaffolding of philosophical questions about how different men and women are at heart....Reminiscent of the work of Alderman's mentor Margaret Atwood, The Power is perfect for book clubs, where readers will undoubtedly debate the finer points of nature versus nurture."―Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness

"The Power is stupendous. It's gorgeously written, endlessly exciting, fun, and frightening."
―Ayelet Waldman, author of A Really Good Day

"The Hunger Games crossed with The Handmaid's Tale."
―Cosmopolitan

"What starts out as a fantasy of female empowerment deepens and darkens into an interrogation of power itself, its uses and abuses and what it does to the people who have it... Alderman's breakout work."
―Claire Armitstead, Guardian

"Outstanding... Alderman imagines a world much like ours, with one difference: teenage girls suddenly have the ability to electrocute people. This is the perfect read if you've been itching for something to get you through to season two of The Handmaid's Tale."―Melissa Ragsdale, Bustle

"The Power is at once as streamlined as a 90-minute action film and as weirdly resonant as one of Atwood's own early fictions... Alderman has conducted a brilliant thought experiment in the nature of power itself...Turning the world inside out, she reveals how one of the greatest hallmarks of power is the chance to create a mythology around how that power was used."―John Freeman, Boston Globe

"This is a thriller that terrifies and leaves behind a lingering tingle that's part discomfort and part exhilaration. Easy to read, hard to put down, difficult to forget."―Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

"The Power is a subtly funny, lyrical and utterly subversive vision of an impossible future. As all the best visionaries do, Alderman shines a penetrating and yet merciful light on to our present and the so many cruelties in which we may be complicit."―A.L. Kennedy

"Please, please, PLEASE read Naomi Alderman's The Power. It'll crack your brain open in all the right ways. Such an important, timely book."
―Literary Death Match

"Audaciously depict[s]...the most extreme results of a movement that seeks rather than interrogates power: That if feminism has become a means for domination, it has lost its way."―Bridget Read, Vogue

"Ingenious....Deserves to be read by every woman (and, for that matter, every man)."
―Francesca Steele, The Times UK

"A page-turning thriller and timely exploration of gender roles, censorship and repressive political regimes, The Power is a must-read for today's times."―Lauren Bufferd, BookPage

"Gripping and disturbing, it pushes the reader -- even the confidently feminist reader -- to question the assumptions underlying many of the mechanisms that drive relationships between women and men."
―Harper's Bazaar UK

"Alderman's storytelling is visceral and brave; you'll stay up all night reading after a thousand deals with the clock that you'll put it down after just a few more pages. Gleeful, intelligent, clever, and unflinching, The Power is the kind of book to keep a person going."―Fiona Zublin, Ozy

"A searing critique of how power is used in a world in which a long-oppressed class can suddenly fight back."―Renay Williams, Barnes & Noble Blog

"By gleefully replacing the protocols of one gender with another, Alderman has created a thrilling narrative stuffed with provocative scenarios and thought experiments. The Power is a blast."

―Suzi Feay, Financial Times UK

"When we say that The Power is profoundly disturbing and you may well want to argue with it as you read, we mean that in a good way."
―SFX, Five Stars

About the Author

Naomi Alderman is the recipient of the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction for The Power. She is also the author of The Liars' Gospel and Disobedience, which won the Orange Prize for New Writers, has been published in ten languages, and has been made into a film by Rachel Weisz.

Alderman was selected for Granta's once-a-decade list of Best of Young British Novelists and was chosen by Margaret Atwood as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. She is the cocreator and lead writer of the bestselling smartphone audio adventure app Zombies, Run! She contributes regularly to The Guardian and presents Science Stories on BBC Radio 4. She lives in London.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown and Company; First Edition (October 10, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316547611
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316547611
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #199,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,834 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)
- #2,649 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #3,066 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
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myra

The Power: Powerful, uncomfortable, and Thought-provoking

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2018

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The Power was really good, and really thought provoking and uncomfortable and made me shamefully pleased and horrified and really mad at once.

Let's break it down:

It was good because it was well written and original. I loved the interplay between the main text and the correspondence that took place at the beginning and the end of the book. It was thought-provoking in presenting a different idea for consideration and doing so in a way I hadn't seen before. The role reversal between men and women was fascinating and infuriating. I loved all the details and nuances that the author included that I just got because I live them every single day as a woman.

The Power made me uncomfortable in itself and uncomfortable in the things it made me feel. There's some really cruel scenes in here, abuse and assult and rape. And it's gross and tragic. But some part of me, some part that maybe I didn't want to admit was there, felt so satisfied by that violence. Like finally, we are in control. Women don't have to bow to the power of men. Men have to feel the fear and the insecurity and the discomfort of being scared, insecure, unsure for a large majority of seemingly mundane circumstances (like walking alone, walking at night, being approaching by groups of people of the opposite gender, being approached by a single individual of the opposite gender, having to be constantly "protected" and validated by the opposite gender), and part of me loved that and totally rejoiced in imagining a world where I wasn't powerless in the way that I am. But that's awful and really I don't want anyone to feel powerless and fearful because it sucks.

It also made me really mad because it was SO RELATABLE. The dialog between the man and the women at the beginning and the end of the story made me clench my teeth because the power/dominance relationships that it presented in business/work/professional settings was so true and so infuriating. But I don't want to give too much away...

Definitely worth the read!

12 people found this helpful

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Kyndri Hopkins

An electrifying read (pun intended)

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2024

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I love this work of speculative fiction. I think the thing I like most is this idea that it's not gender that dictates disposition but instead is power and strength. It's a great read and made me think differently about the phrase girl power.

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LaBouquinisteImpertinente

What if women had the power?

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2018

Verified Purchase

This was a timely book to have happened upon during this era of #MeToo. Definitely a one of a kind book. I have never read this sort of science-fiction before and it was strangely liberating and incredibly insightful.

It is amazing how it takes such a simple exercise of role reversal to make you rethink some of the things you've long accepted as "normal".

There is one main character in the book that really shows you the progression of change that is occurring in this fictitious society. He goes from living in a world where he ALWAYS feels safe, to living in a world where he is likely to get violently attacked at any moment (and does). Having that sort of mental exercise put into context the violence that we, as women, have to face on a nearly daily basis. And if we are not directly facing it, we are living in constant fear of violence against us.

The UN recently released a report titled a Global Study on Homicide: Gender-related killing of women and girls. One of the key findings of this study was that of the 87,000 intentionally killed women in 2017, more than half of them (58%) were killed by intimate partners or family members. This study made headlines because it was stated that in the four regions of the world with the highest share of murdered women, the home was the most likely place for a woman to be killed. To put this into context, women and girls account for only 20% of total homicides. And only one out of every five homicides at the global level is perpetuated by an intimate partner or family member. However, women and girls make up the vast majority of those deaths (64%).

The Power gives the reader the opportunity to imagine what the world would look like if women no longer had to fear for their lives. If women no longer had to fear for their lives in their own homes. If women no longer had to fear their significant other or their family members.

There is this particularly powerful scene in the book where a governmental official realizes during a meeting that she is the most powerful person in the room. That if she wanted to she could do anything she wanted to anyone she wanted. The internal discussion she has with herself is incredible because she thinks to herself, "Is this how men have always felt?".

All in all, a great read and highly recommended.

Additionally, I highly recommend checking out these two French films that do a similar mind experiment: Oppressed Majority and I Am Not An Easy Man.

38 people found this helpful

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Stomiidae

Excelente libro

Reviewed in Mexico on April 4, 2023

Verified Purchase

Este libro es BUENÍSIMO me tuvo enganchada de principio a fin, y me hizo reflexionar mucho acerca de las mujeres, el poder, y el sexismo.
Se lo recomendaría a quien sea que le guste la ciencia ficción, pero más aún si eres mujer y MÁS si eres feminista. Excelente entretenimiento 5/5

One person found this helpful

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Elisabetta

Mindblowing

Reviewed in Italy on March 12, 2024

Verified Purchase

Can't stop thinking about it. A great book!

TG

Libro súper interesante

Reviewed in Spain on February 28, 2023

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Súper interesante el enfoque que le dan

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Canadian enthusiast

Where can I order a skein?

Reviewed in Canada on January 2, 2020

Verified Purchase

Thought-provoking read and if you’re a woman, it’ll make you wish it were all true. The banter between the “author” and his editor (Naomi) at the very end puts it all in blunt perspective. Though fictitious, the story is a creative and witty way to make the female experience accessible to all. Any woman who has experienced sexism (ie all women) will relate.

4 people found this helpful

Sapphire Bubble

An unflinching, dystopian look into the corruption that power brings

Reviewed in India on April 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

It is a fantasy that all women have had. The power to strike down our oppressors, our abusers, the ones who leer at us on the streets, touch us without consent, and grope us at our workplace, in public transport, in clubs. Anywhere and everywhere we go, we are told to keep vigil. To be alert; because maybe we will be safe that way. But we never are. So, when the Day of the Girls come, girls live that fantasy. They strike down their oppressors with all their might, leave them injured and even near death as electricity pumps through their veins. A striated muscle in a female's collarbone, called the skein, is the cause of this power. The power only awakens in girls but they learn to rouse it in women as well. And suddenly, the tables are turned. The women are the ones with the power, and men without.

The book takes us through a journey that we have all dreamt, a world where women will have all the power to resist, to fight, to bruise and to stop those who oppress them and benefit from their misery. A girl who was being sexually assaulted by her adoptive father leaves him lying dead on the floor with his pants around his ankles. Women who were sold into sex slavery, gather their strength and unleash their wrath upon all those who had any hand in it. This is all good, right? Why should they not be allowed to torture those men as they had tortured them? Why should they not have the right to remove them from this Earth, so that they could never do it again?

But it doesn't end there. The book is so well-written and it grips your mind, daring you to look away yet you can't. It makes us question everything we know, and everything that we believe about ourselves. It makes you ask a million questions. Will this really happen if the landscape changes so suddenly? Will all women really become oppressors after being oppressed for centuries? And worse of all, will they all really become abusers when given all that power?

I would like to think not. We would all like to think not. When we fight sexism and patriarchy every day, the fight is for equality, to be treated fairly. But when given the power, will we become the same as those men with their toxic masculinity? We do not know for sure, but Naomi Alderman explores that avenue too well. This book is not for the light-hearted. It is about the possibility of what will happen if women are given power more than men have ever possessed, and what they will do with it. It begs the question, whether those with power always exploit those without.

To say that this book changed me and my perspective would be accurate and yet underrated. It made me question every facet of my being and every ideal that I pride myself upon. I, for one, can't wait to read every other book written by Naomi Alderman and see how she changes my being with them.

3 people found this helpful

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