Winner of the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction
Longlisted for the 2017 Orwell Prize
What if the power to hurt were in women's hands? Suddenly - tomorrow or the day after - teenage girls find that with a flick of their fingers, they can inflict agonizing pain and even death. With this single twist, the four lives at the heart of Naomi Alderman's extraordinary, visceral novel are utterly transformed.
"Bold, accessible and beautifully written." - Tessa Ross, Baileys Prize Prize Chair
'She throws her head back and pushes her chest forward and lets go a huge blast right into the centre of his body. The rivulets and streams of red scarring run across his chest and up around his throat. She'd put her hand on his heart and stopped him dead.'
From the Author
My new novel, The Power, is a piece of feminist science fiction - or speculative fiction, or fiction about a fictional thing rather than a real thing (curious concept). In the novel, very suddenly almost all the women in the world develop the power to electrocute people at will. Anything from a tiny tingle all the way to full electro-death. And then everything is different.
The novel follows four main characters as they pick their way across this changed world. There's Roxy, the daughter of a London crime family with three older brothers; she was never supposed to take over the family business but she starts to have other ideas. There's Tunde, a young journalism student in Lagos, who sees that the revolution needs documenting, and gets himself into some dicey situations trying to be the one to do it. There's Allie, who comes from a troubled background in the South of the USA and sees that what people need is something new to believe in. And there's Margot, who was a low-level politician in New England but begins to have new ambitions.
It's a novel of ideas - what would happen if women had the power to cause pain and destruction? Do we really believe that women are naturally peaceful and nurturing? How much of gender is in our expectations of violence? But it's also a thriller; in pursuit of power each of the main characters will eventually come into conflict with the others, and they're each a force to be reckoned with.
At the novel's heart is the question of power: who has it, how do you get it, what does it do to you when you've got it? And when you wield the power, how long will it be before the power wields you?
About the Author
Naomi Alderman is the author of four novels. In 2006 she won the Orange Award for New Writers and in 2007 she was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, as well as being selected as one of Waterstones' 25 Writers for the Future. All of her novels have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime. In 2013 she was selected for the prestigious Granta Best of Young British Writers. She lives in London.
Industry Reviews
It's magnificent. I'm agog. Really, I'm several gogs. So smart and scary and sad but true -- Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Handmaid's Tale for the Gone Girl generation * Grazia *
A stone cold genius -- Sarah Perry
The Hunger Games crossed with The Handmaid's Tale * Cosmopolitan *
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
Electrifying! Shocking! Will knock your socks off! Then you'll think twice, about everything -- Margaret Atwood
The Power is a fascinating look at what the world might be like if millennia of sexism went the other way...as a whole the narrative feels ingenious...deserves to be read by every woman (and, for that matter, every man) * The Times *
A feminist science-fiction story that's about to make waves * Red *
If you enjoy Margaret Atwood's dystopian fiction, this strong, substantial novel is for you * Woman & Home *
Alderman is a fluent and powerful writer * Sunday Times *
Thought-provoking novel * Glamour *
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 *
I loved it; it was visceral, provocative and curiously pertinent . . . The story has stayed with me since * Stylist, the decade's 15 best books by remarkable women *
As awesome as it is compulsive * Heat, 5 stars *
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 * Guardian *
A raw, gutsy slice of speculative dystopia * Metro *
Like the best science fiction, this dystopian feminist fantasy holds up a mirror to the here and now * Mail on Sunday *
A gripping read and a reminder of the true joy of a truly engaging story * Stylist *
Frenetic sci-fi novel * Daily Mail *
Naomi's super-charged, subversive novel....forcing you to rethink everything * Psychologies *
One of my favourite books of 2016 - clever, harrowing and thought-provoking -- Paula Hawkins, best-selling author of The Girl on the Train
Electrifying -- Margaret Atwood
It's a feminist dystopian page-turner of a thriller and I'm IN LOVE with it -- Marian Keyes
This year's Baileys winner is simultaneously a high-concept thought experiment and a rollercoaster, action packed read * Guardian *
The Power by Naomi Alderman is the feminist flipside to The Handmaid's Tale, asking what happens when women are suddenly the stronger sex * Evening Standard *
An enthrallingly told Cassandra-like prophecy from the ever-inventive Naomi Alderman * Observer *
This book sparks with such electric satire that you should read it wearing insulated gloves * Washington Post *
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 * Boston Globe *
In this fierce and unsettling novel, the ability to generate a dangerous electrical force from their bodies lets women take control, resulting in a vast, systemic upheaval of gender dynamics across the globe * New York Times Books of the Year *
It's a riveting story, told in fittingly electric language, that explores how power corrupts everyone: those new to it and those resisting its loss' * New York Times *
