Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Kindred : Bluestreak - Octavia E. Butler

Kindred

By: Octavia E. Butler

1 February 2004 | Edition Number 25

At a Glance

$35.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $8.94 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 10 business days

Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. ("You have to read them.")

From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur "Genius" Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner

The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm."

Dana's torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner's plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.

Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction's oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. "Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise" (New York Times).

"Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it's absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream."
--N. K. Jemisin

Developed for television by writer/executive producer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchmen), executive producers also include Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields (The Americans, The Patient), and Darren Aronofsky (The Whale). Janicza Bravo (Zola) is director and an executive producer of the pilot. Kindred stars Mallori Johnson, Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, and Gayle Rankin.

Industry Reviews
Octavia Butler is a writer who will be with us for a long, long time, and Kindred is that rare magical artifact . . . the novel one returns to, again and again.--Harlan Ellison

One cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art with much to say about love, hate, slavery, and racial dilemmas, then and now. --Sam Frank, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

In Kindred, Octavia Butler creates a road for the impossible and a balm for the unbearable. It is everything the literature of science fiction can be. --Walter Mosley

Truly terrifying . . . A book you'll find hard to put down.--Essence

Butler's books are exceptional . . . She is a realist, writing the most detailed social criticism and creating some of the most fascinating female characters in the genre . . . real women caught in impossible situations.--Dorothy Allison, Village Voice

Butler's literary craftsmanship is superb.--Washington Post Book World

One of the most original, thought-provoking works examining race and identity.--Lynell George, Los Angeles Times

This powerful novel about a modern black woman transported back in time to a slave plantation in the antebellum South is the perfect introduction to Butler's work and perspectives for those not usually enamored of science fiction. . .A harrowing, haunting story. --John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

No other work of fantasy or science fiction writings brings the intimate environment of the antebellum South to life better than Octavia E. Butler's Kindred. --Kevin Weston, San Francisco Chronicle

A celebrated mainstay of college courses in women's studies and black literature and culture; some colleges require it as mandatory freshman reading. --Linell Smith, The Baltimore Sun

Kindred is as much a novel of psychological horror as it is a novel of science fiction. . .a work of art whose individual accomplishment defies categorization. --Barbara Strickland, The Austin Chronicle

A startling and engrossing commentary on the complex actuality and continuing heritage of American slavery. --Sherley Anne Williams, Ms.

Her books are disturbing, unsettling... In a field dominated by white male authors, Butler's African-American feminist perspective is unique, and uniquely suited to reshape the boundaries of the sci-fi genre. --Bill Glass, L. A. Style

More in Science Fiction

Carl's Doomsday Scenario : Dungeon Crawler Carl Bk2 - Matt Dinniman
Dungeon Crawler Carl : Dungeon Crawler Carl Bk1 - Matt Dinniman

RRP $55.00

$42.75

22%
OFF
The Ending Fire : The Ending Fire - Saara El-Arifi

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

RRP $24.99

$19.99

20%
OFF
Stranger Things : One Way or Another - Caitlin Schneiderhan

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
The Hydrogen Sonata : Culture - Iain M. Banks

RRP $24.99

$20.75

17%
OFF
Identity Theft : Star Trek: The Original Series - Greg Cox

RRP $34.99

$26.75

24%
OFF
The Dark Forest : The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
There Is No Antimemetics Division - qntm

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
Dungeon Crawler Carl : Dungeon Crawler Carl Bk1 - Matt Dinniman

RRP $34.99

$26.99

23%
OFF
Fire Spirit - Graham Masterton

Paperback

RRP $22.99

$20.75

10%
OFF
Land of the Lustrous 13 : Land of the Lustrous - Haruko Ichikawa

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
The Collected Stories - Cixin Liu

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
Gachiakuta 8 : Gachiakuta - Kei Urana

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
The Electric State - Simon Stålenhag

RRP $59.99

$45.75

24%
OFF
Persepolis Rising : Expanse: Book 7 - James S. A. Corey

RRP $22.99

$18.99

17%
OFF