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| 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 £33,600 in 2021) 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]
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Main article: The Power (TV series) |
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]