Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2019
A radical love story for right now, from 'one of the most gifted writers working today' (New York Times)
‘Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.’
Inspired by Mary Shelley’s gothic classic Frankenstein, discover this audacious new novel about the bodies we live in and the bodies we desire.
In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love – against their better judgement – with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI.
Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with Mum again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere.
Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead… but waiting to return to life.
With a bold contemporary take on the same dilemmas that concerned Shelley, Winterson explores what it means to be human in a funny and furious love story about life itself.
Industry Reviews
A riotous reimagining with an energy and passion all of its own that reanimates Frankenstein as a cautionary tale for a contemporary moment dominated by debates about Brexit, gender, artificial intelligence and medical experimentation... While the story has a gripping momentum of its own, it also fizzes with ideas. -- Daisy Hay * Financial Times *
A riotous reimagining with an energy and passion all of its own that reanimates Frankenstein as a cautionary tale for a contemporary moment dominated by debates about Brexit, gender, artificial intelligence and medical experimentation... While the story has a gripping momentum of its own, it also fizzes with ideas. -- Daisy Hay * Financial Times *
Here, hard science and dreamy Romanticism exist in both tension and harmony... Frankissstein abounds with invention... this is a work of both pleasure and profundity, robustly and skilfully structured, and suffused with all Winterson's usual preoccupations - gender, language, sexuality, the limits of individual liberty and the life of ideas. -- Sam Byers * Guardian, *Book of the Week* *
A modern take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it's a fascinating and engrossing look at AI, science, gender fluidity and, ultimately, what it really means to be human. -- Nicola Sturgeon * New Statesman, *Books of the Year* *
Yes, the book we have all been waiting for. Yes, everything Winterson has always done so well. Yes, above and beyond anything that is yet to be written.