Womens Prize For Fiction Winner
The Power
by Naomi Alderman
Summary
Teenage girls worldwide develop the ability to deliver electric shocks, and within a generation the entire structure of human power inverts. Alderman uses the premise to interrogate gender, violence and how quickly the oppressed can become oppressors. The novel reads as speculative fiction and as a mirror held up to the present.
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Historical Context & Significance
Naomi Alderman wrote the book while mentored by Margaret Atwood, and its win pushed feminist speculative fiction into the mainstream.