 | |
| Author | Naomi Alderman |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Marsh Davies |
| Country | Great Britain |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Viking |
Publication date | 2016 |
| Pages | 340 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0-670-91998-7 |
The Power is a 2016 science fiction novel by the British writer Naomi Alderman. [1] Its central premise is of women developing the ability to release electrical jolts from their fingers, which allows them to become the dominant sex. In 2017, it won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
The Power is a book within a book: a manuscript of an imagined history of the tumultuous 21st century period –now 5,000 years in the past –during which womankind became the dominant gender after developing and sharing the power to emit electricity from their hands. [2] The manuscript is submitted by Neil Adam Armon to another author named Naomi Alderman for an early read; it includes historical research aimed at filling in missing details leading up to the Cataclysm, [3] in which one of the then-newly empowered females destroyed all modern technology. [4] The inclusion of the author's name is a subtle nod to the audience, as if the novel they are reading is the intellectual property of Neil Adam Armon, stolen by Naomi Alderman.[ citation needed ]
The Power opens with a letter from a male writer from the "Men Writer's Association," asking Naomi Alderman to read his historical novel. He gushes praise upon Alderman and thanks her profusely for her time.
Roxy is an English teenager whose mother is attacked. She manages to defend herself, injuring one attacker, but another beats her up and kills her mother. Tunde is an aspiring journalist in Nigeria who starts to film women using their emerging power and publish it online. Margot is a mayor in Wisconsin who discovers her daughter Jocelyn is also developing these powers. Allie is a girl who is raped by her foster father and kills him with her powers before taking refuge in a convent.
The power is found to come from a newly discovered electricity-generating organ, called the "skein". As the power emerges across the world, Tunde's reputation allows him unique access to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to document growing turmoil. Allie discovers how to use her powers to heal and becomes an influential religious leader, propagating a matriarchal doctrine. Margot develops training camps for the women to use their powers. As women in Moldova start paramilitary groups, Tatiana, the president's wife, steps in to take over the country. Rival Awadi-Atif develops a rebel army to oppose her. Tunde is nearly raped by marauding women in India. Margot becomes governor by using her powers to silence her male opponent during a debate. A drug called "glitter" enhances women's electricity-generating power. UrbanDox gains influence as an anti-woman activist. Roxy takes over her father's criminal enterprise. Tatiana begins to behave erratically, leading to mass killings of men.
Allie kills Tatiana and decides to take the world back to the Stone Age to reset its growth and structures based on women's powers.
The influential author responds to the young male writer, telling him it is a worthy book, but that he should publish it under a woman's name if he wants to be taken seriously.
The Power is Alderman's fourth novel and was influenced by her relationship with Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood. The mentorship was arranged through the Rolex mentorship program. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph in 2012, Alderman explained the influence of Atwood's work on her as a novelist before the mentorship as, "I'd been to an Orthodox Jewish primary school where every morning the boys said, 'Thank you God for not making me a woman.' If you put that together with The Handmaid's Tale in your head, something will eventually go fizz! Boom!" [5]
In a 2016 interview with The Guardian , Alderman described being inspired by Atwood while writing the novel, saying, "The one thing Margaret directly suggested was the idea of a convent." [6] In that interview, she also stated that she had written roughly 200,000 words of a novel, before scrapping that draft at the end of 2013 and changed the entire concept into what became The Power, based on about 2,000 words of the original effort. [6]
In December 2016, Alderman stated that "readers of The Power are already asking me if there'll be a sequel – there won't be another novel (probably), but there are definitely so many more stories to tell than I had room for in the book." [7]
Analysis by the review aggregator website Book Marks , based on 16 critics, indicated "rave" reviews. [8] The Washington Post reviewer Ron Charles praised the novel as "one of those essential feminist works that terrifies and illuminates, enrages and encourages". [9] In a positive review for The New York Times Book Review , contributor Amal El-Mohtar did note that "it doesn't quite make sense on a world-building level or cohere on a philosophical one." [3]
In June 2017, The Power won the £30,000 (equivalent to £39,900in 2023) Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction; [10] it was the first science fiction novel to win the prize in its (then) 22-year history. [11] At year's end, it was named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017. [12]
In December 2016, shortly after the novel was published, the TV rights to adapt The Power were acquired by Jane Featherstone in an 11-way auction. [7] Adapted as a nine-episode Amazon Prime Video television series, it completed filming in 2022 (following extensive delays due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on television productions), was released on 31 March 2023 and concluded on 12 May 2023. The cast includes Toni Collette as Margot, [13] Halle Bush as Allie and Ria Zmitrowicz as Roxy. [14]
Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.
The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. Offred is the central character and narrator and one of the "Handmaids": women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead.
Sarah Ellen Polley is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, political activist and retired actress. She first garnered attention as a child actress for her role as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary's books. This subsequently led to her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea (1990–1996). She has starred in many feature films, including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Guinevere (1999), Go (1999), The Weight of Water (2000), No Such Thing (2001), My Life Without Me (2003), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Splice (2009), and Mr. Nobody (2009).
Kelley Armstrong is a Canadian writer, primarily of fantasy novels since 2001.
Alias Grace is a historical fiction novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. First published in 1996 by McClelland & Stewart, it won the Canadian Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Naomi Alderman is an English novelist, game writer, and television executive producer. She is best known for her speculative science fiction novel The Power, which won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2017 and has been adapted into a television series for Amazon Studios.
Naomi Novik is an American author of speculative fiction. She is known for the Temeraire series (2006–2016), an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars involving dragons, and her Scholomance fantasy series (2020–2022). Her standalone fantasy novels Uprooted (2015) and Spinning Silver (2018) were inspired by Polish folklore and the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale respectively. Novik has won many awards for her work, including the Alex, Audie, British Fantasy, Locus, Mythopoeic and Nebula Awards.
Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist, essayist, public speaker, political scientist and activist.
The Power may refer to:
Rivka Galchen is a Canadian-American writer. Her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, was published in 2008 and was awarded the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She is the author of five books and a contributor of journalism and essays to The New Yorker magazine.
Margot Elise Robbie is an Australian actress and producer. Her work includes both blockbuster and independent films, and her accolades include nominations for three Academy Awards, six BAFTA Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2017, and Forbes named her the world's highest-paid actress in 2023.
Desert Mothers is a neologism, coined in feminist theology as an analogy to Desert Fathers, for the ammas or female Christian ascetics living in the desert of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. They typically lived in the monastic communities that began forming during that time, though sometimes they lived as hermits. Monastic communities acted collectively with limited outside relations with lay people. Some ascetics chose to venture into isolated locations to restrict relations with others, deepen spiritual connection, and other ascetic purposes. Other women from that era who influenced the early ascetic or monastic tradition while living outside the desert are also described as Desert Mothers.
Emily St. John Mandel is a Canadian novelist and essayist. She has written six novels, including Station Eleven (2014), The Glass Hotel (2020), and Sea of Tranquility (2022). Station Eleven, which has been translated into 33 languages, has been adapted into a limited series on HBO Max. The Glass Hotel was translated into twenty languages and was selected by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2020. Sea of Tranquility was published in April 2022 and debuted at number three on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Nicole Dennis-Benn is a Jamaican novelist. She is known for her 2016 debut novel, Here Comes the Sun, which was named a "Best Book of the year" by The New York Times, and for her best-selling novel, Patsy, acclaimed by Time, NPR, People Magazine, and Oprah Magazine. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is a notable out lesbian and feminist author who explores themes of gender, sexuality, Jamaican life, and its diaspora in her works.
Juno Dawson is an English author of young adult fiction and non-fiction. Dawson's notable works include This Book Is Gay, Mind Your Head, Margot & Me, The Gender Games, Clean, Meat Market, and the series, "Her Majesty's Royal Coven".
The Obelisk Gate is a 2016 science fantasy novel by N. K. Jemisin and the second volume in the Broken Earth series—following The Fifth Season, and preceding The Stone Sky. The Obelisk Gate was released to strong reviews and, like its predecessor in the series, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Ria Zmitrowicz is a British actress. She is known for her work in theatre, earning WhatOnStage and Manchester Theatre Award nominations, and her role in the BBC drama Three Girls (2017).
The Testaments is a 2019 novel by Margaret Atwood. It is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (1985). The novel is set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale. It is narrated by Aunt Lydia, a character from the previous novel; Agnes, a young woman living in Gilead; and Daisy, a young woman living in Canada.
The Power is an American-British science fiction drama television series developed by Raelle Tucker, Naomi Alderman, Claire Wilson, and Sarah Quintrell for Amazon Prime Video, based on Alderman's 2016 novel The Power. The first season consists of nine episodes and premiered on 31 March 2023 and concluded on 12 May 2023.
Future Home of the Living God is a dystopian novel and work of speculative fiction by Louise Erdrich first published on November 14, 2017, by HarperCollins. The novel follows 26-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, an Ojibwe woman raised by white parents, who visits her birth mother's reservation just as the United States becomes increasingly totalitarian following a reversal of evolution.