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Kindred
‘The marker you should judge all other time-travelling narratives by’ Guardian
‘No novel I’ve read this year has felt as relevant, as gut-wrenching or as essential’ The Pool
‘[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human’ New York Times
—
Octavia E. Butler’s ground-breaking masterpiece, with an original foreword by Ayòbámi Adébáyò.
In 1976, Dana dreams of being a writer. In 1815, she is assumed a slave.
When Dana first meets Rufus on a Maryland plantation, he’s drowning. She saves his life – and it will happen again and again.
Neither of them understands his power to summon her whenever his life is threatened, nor the significance of the ties that bind them.
And each time Dana saves him, the more aware she is that her own life might be over before it’s even begun.
This is the extraordinary story of two people bound by blood, separated by so much more than time.
—
What readers are saying about KINDRED:
‘It was written in 1979 but could have been written last year. Incredible. I couldn’t put it down‘
‘The narrator is us – we see the abomination and humiliation of slavery not through a slave’s eyes, but our modern-day eyes, and it makes it all the more powerful‘
‘A must-read for everyone’
‘Emotionally and viscerally alive and challenging. I don’t know how I missed it before now’
Read More
‘No novel I’ve read this year has felt as relevant, as gut-wrenching or as essential’ The Pool
‘[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human’ New York Times
—
Octavia E. Butler’s ground-breaking masterpiece, with an original foreword by Ayòbámi Adébáyò.
In 1976, Dana dreams of being a writer. In 1815, she is assumed a slave.
When Dana first meets Rufus on a Maryland plantation, he’s drowning. She saves his life – and it will happen again and again.
Neither of them understands his power to summon her whenever his life is threatened, nor the significance of the ties that bind them.
And each time Dana saves him, the more aware she is that her own life might be over before it’s even begun.
This is the extraordinary story of two people bound by blood, separated by so much more than time.
—
What readers are saying about KINDRED:
‘It was written in 1979 but could have been written last year. Incredible. I couldn’t put it down‘
‘The narrator is us – we see the abomination and humiliation of slavery not through a slave’s eyes, but our modern-day eyes, and it makes it all the more powerful‘
‘A must-read for everyone’
‘Emotionally and viscerally alive and challenging. I don’t know how I missed it before now’
Reviews
One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had
Butler's prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision
[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human
No novel I've read this year has felt as relevant, as gut-wrenching or as essential... If you've ever tweeted "All Lives Matter", someone needs to shove Kindred into your hand, and quickly
Kindred is that rare magical artifact . . . the novel one returns to, again and again
One cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art
[A] must-read novel
Everyone should read at least one novel by the grand dame of science fiction, and Kindred is a perfect (and harrowing and disturbing and brilliant) place to start
The immediate effect of reading Octavia Butler's Kindred is to make every other time travel book in the world look as if it's wimping out... This is a brilliant book, utterly absorbing, very well written, and deeply distressing. It's very hard to read, not because it's not good but because it's so good
A searing, caustic examination of bizarre and alien practices on the third planet from the sun
One of the most original, thought-provoking works examining race and identity
If you haven't read Butler, you don't yet understand how rich the possibilities of science fiction can be
Butler's books are exceptional
Few writers in our field are so good at blending page-turners with philosophical questions so seamlessly
A dark, compelling and still horribly resonant time travel story
Impossible to turn away from once you've devoured the first few pages
