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The Power Kindle Edition

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 27,490 ratings

In this stunning bestseller praised as "our era's Handmaid's Tale," a fierce new power has emerged—and only women have it (Washington Post). 

In
The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family.

But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets. From award-winning author Naomi Alderman,
The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways.

"Captivating, fierce, and unsettling...I was riveted by every page. Alderman's prose is immersive and, well, electric." —New York Times Book Review
Popular Highlights in this book

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for THE POWER:


"Electrifying! Shocking! Will knock your socks off! Then you'll think twice, about everything."―
Margaret Atwood

"Magnificent. I'm agog. I'm several gogs. Smart and scary and sad but true. It's a classic, in the way that it's hard to imagine it ever wasn't there."―
Joss Whedon

"Alderman has written our era's
Handmaid's Tale, and, like Margaret Atwood's classic, The Power is one of those essential feminist works that terrifies and illuminates, enrages and encourages....This book sparks with such electric satire that you should read it wearing insulated gloves."―Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Narratively complex, philosophically searching, and gorgeously rendered."―
Lisa Shea, Elle

"Fierce and unsettling...Through immersive prose and a riveting plot, Alderman explores how power corrupts everyone: those who gain it, and those resisting its loss."―
Radhika Jones, New York Times Book Review

"Richly imagined, ambitious, and propulsively written."―
Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic

"Alderman's writing is beautiful, and her intelligence seems almost limitless. She also has a pitch-dark sense of humor that she wields perfectly."
Michael Schaub, NPR

"Alderman's tilted dystopia is a smartly layered place of slippery slopes and moral ambiguities, a fitting folktale for strange times."―
Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

"I was riveted by every page. Alderman's prose is immersive and, well, electric, and I felt a closed circuit humming between the book and me as I read."―
Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times Book Review

"An instant classic of speculative fiction... Smart, readable and joyously achieved."
Justine Jordan, Guardian

"Bold and disturbing...it's not just a book of the moment.
The Power is a major innovation in the overlapping genres of feminist dystopia/utopia, science fiction, and speculative fiction."―Elaine Showalter, New York Review of Books

"Fans of speculative fiction (see also: Margaret Atwood and Ben Marcus) about empowered youth will be struck by Alderman's speedy and thorough inhabitation of a world just different enough from ours to jolt the imagination. Mothers, lock up your boys."―
Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair

"Alderman has the daring and good sense to eschew go-girl uplift in favor of terrifying and complex dystopia."―
Boris Kachka, Vulture/ New York Magazine

"A suspenseful thrill ride filled with deep, contrasting female leads on a scaffolding of philosophical questions about how different men and women are at heart....Reminiscent of the work of Alderman's mentor Margaret Atwood,
The Power is perfect for book clubs, where readers will undoubtedly debate the finer points of nature versus nurture."―Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness

"The Power is stupendous. It's gorgeously written, endlessly exciting, fun, and frightening."
Ayelet Waldman, author of A Really Good Day

"
The Hunger Games crossed with The Handmaid's Tale."
Cosmopolitan

"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... Alderman's breakout work."
Claire Armitstead, Guardian

"Outstanding... Alderman imagines a world much like ours, with one difference: teenage girls suddenly have the ability to electrocute people. This is the perfect read if you've been itching for something to get you through to season two of
The Handmaid's Tale."―Melissa Ragsdale, Bustle

"
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... Alderman has conducted a brilliant thought experiment in the nature of power itself...Turning the world inside out, she reveals how one of the greatest hallmarks of power is the chance to create a mythology around how that power was used."―John Freeman, Boston Globe

"This is a thriller that terrifies and leaves behind a lingering tingle that's part discomfort and part exhilaration. Easy to read, hard to put down, difficult to forget."―
Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

"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

"Please, please, PLEASE read Naomi Alderman's
The Power. It'll crack your brain open in all the right ways. Such an important, timely book."
Literary Death Match

"Audaciously depict[s]...the most extreme results of a movement that seeks rather than interrogates power: That if feminism has become a means for domination, it has lost its way."―
Bridget Read, Vogue

"Ingenious....Deserves to be read by every woman (and, for that matter, every man)."
Francesca Steele, The Times UK

"A page-turning thriller and timely exploration of gender roles, censorship and repressive political regimes,
The Power is a must-read for today's times."―Lauren Bufferd, BookPage

"Gripping and disturbing, it pushes the reader -- even the confidently feminist reader -- to question the assumptions underlying many of the mechanisms that drive relationships between women and men."
Harper's Bazaar UK

"Alderman's storytelling is visceral and brave; you'll stay up all night reading after a thousand deals with the clock that you'll put it down after just a few more pages. Gleeful, intelligent, clever, and unflinching,
The Power is the kind of book to keep a person going."―Fiona Zublin, Ozy

"A searing critique of how power is used in a world in which a long-oppressed class can suddenly fight back."―
Renay Williams, Barnes & Noble Blog

"By gleefully replacing the protocols of one gender with another, Alderman has created a thrilling narrative stuffed with provocative scenarios and thought experiments.
The Power is a blast."

Suzi Feay, Financial Times UK

"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

About the Author

Naomi Alderman is the recipient of the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction for The Power. She is also the author of The Liars' Gospel and Disobedience, which won the Orange Prize for New Writers, has been published in ten languages, and has been made into a film by Rachel Weisz.

Alderman was selected for 
Granta's once-a-decade list of Best of Young British Novelists and was chosen by Margaret Atwood as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. She is the cocreator and lead writer of the bestselling smartphone audio adventure app Zombies, Run! She contributes regularly to The Guardian and presents Science Stories on BBC Radio 4. She lives in London.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01N0Z1EY0
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown and Company; Illustrated edition (October 10, 2017)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 10, 2017
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3921 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 402 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 27,490 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
27,490 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book thought-provoking and engaging. They describe it as a great, fun read that explores gender dynamics and power. However, some readers found the violence scenes disturbing and hard to take. Opinions vary on the writing quality - some find it well-written and easy to understand, while others consider it complicated and difficult to follow certain ideas.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

460 customers mention "Thought provoking"386 positive74 negative

Customers find the book's premise interesting and engaging. They appreciate the diverse characters and thought-provoking themes. The story is told through multiple points of view, with a powerful scene depicting human nature.

"The Power was really good, and really thought provoking and uncomfortable and made me shamefully pleased and horrified and really mad at once...." Read more

"The plot of this book is great and I loved the comment on society but it is also a tough read...." Read more

"...There is this particularly powerful scene in the book where a governmental official realizes during a meeting that she is the most powerful person..." Read more

"...I did enjoy some special moments in the thoughts and psychology of some of the main characters and their interactions...." Read more

314 customers mention "Readability"307 positive7 negative

Customers find the book engaging and thought-provoking. They describe it as a great read with interesting ideas about men's differences. The first half of the book is wonderful, and the book is worth their time.

"...But I don't want to give too much away... Definitely worth the read!" Read more

"...All in all, a great read and highly recommended...." Read more

"...It's a great read and made me think differently about the phrase girl power." Read more

"A friend recommended this and I agree with her that it’s a quick and fun read. I love the idea...." Read more

118 customers mention "Gender"97 positive21 negative

Customers find the book intriguing and insightful about gender dynamics. They appreciate its sharp commentary on gender imbalance in society. The narrative explores a range of emotions and social issues, including misogyny, patriarchy, and matriarchy. Readers describe it as a thrilling and joyful narrative of women rising out of oppression.

"The plot of this book is great and I loved the comment on society but it is also a tough read...." Read more

"...official realizes during a meeting that she is the most powerful person in the room...." Read more

"...It was an interesting concept, and I appreciated how it played with gender...." Read more

"...I think the thing I like most is this idea that it's not gender that dictates disposition but instead is power and strength...." Read more

71 customers mention "Power"53 positive18 negative

Customers find the book has a nice message about power. They say it imagines the power dynamic and explores the effect of power on society. The book provides an interesting take on modern day power structure, roles, gender, and thought-provoking questions. It offers readers a sci-fi take on power and how the world might be different but also the same.

"The Power was really good, and really thought provoking and uncomfortable and made me shamefully pleased and horrified and really mad at once...." Read more

"...It's powerful and compelling and yet so familiar in an unfamiliar way...." Read more

"...This book is An insightful exploration of "Power": it's meaning, use, and the implications in regards to gender identities and social structures...." Read more

"...What we end up witnessing is that power corrupts...." Read more

234 customers mention "Writing quality"116 positive118 negative

Customers have different views on the writing quality. Some find it well-written and easy to read, with a journalistic style that works perfectly. Others find the book complicated, tough to follow, and hard to put down. They also mention issues with multiple storylines and plot twists.

"...Let's break it down: It was good because it was well written and original...." Read more

"...book is great and I loved the comment on society but it is also a tough read...." Read more

"This was a timely book to have happened upon during this era of #MeToo. Definitely a one of a kind book...." Read more

"...The book is complicated, but not too much. You must read the beginning, even though it looks like a foreword from the author; it is not...." Read more

93 customers mention "Character development"52 positive41 negative

Customers have different views on the character development. Some find the main characters engaging and believable, while others feel the characters lack depth and are boring or cardboard cutouts. The narration is split between several characters, which some consider good.

"...It is amazing how it takes such a simple exercise of role reversal to make you rethink some of the things you've long accepted as "normal"...." Read more

"...No matter how much she writes about her, Allie is still a fairly boring character...." Read more

"...As far as book elements go, suspense and plot and character are all very strong. Roxy, Jocelyn, and Tunde’s POVs were the most interesting to me...." Read more

"...'S TALE (which THE POWER is being compared to), THE POWER fails to paint realistic characters thrown into a dizzyingly changed world...." Read more

29 customers mention "Graphic style"19 positive10 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the graphic style. Some find it elegant and well-drawn, with a tongue-in-cheek finish. Others find the graphics confusing, unnecessary, and grotesque at times. The theme is seen as old-fashioned and depressing, with some parts being dull and grotesque.

"...Wow! What a devistating, amazing, thoughtful and stunning book...." Read more

"...gaining ground. The only detractions were the illustrations that were neither good nor added much to the book. It really did not need..." Read more

"...The last few sections are a wonderful look at what power does no matter who it is given to...." Read more

"...Alderman has beautiful writing style that is poetic and easy and beautiful to read. I'm excited to check out more of her writing...." Read more

68 customers mention "Violence level"16 positive52 negative

Customers find the violence in the book excessive and disturbing. They find the scenes of violence, abuse, and rape graphic and hard to take. The corruption of power results in disturbing violence, with men being depicted as murderers and rapists.

"...There's some really cruel scenes in here, abuse and assult and rape. And it's gross and tragic...." Read more

"...Lots of violence and SA and at some point I was just trying to finish so it would be over 😅 still recommend though, just go in prepared...." Read more

"...It's dry at times and hammy at others, and I think Alderman would have done well to avoid the present tense as it only exacerbates how the scenes..." Read more

"...the reader experiences both great spiritual love and incredible violence. The new social restrictions for men provide a special delicious irony...." Read more

Holy cow! What a book!!!
5 out of 5 stars
Holy cow! What a book!!!
You’ve got to read this ladies!!! I found the reactions of the male population to be accurate. This book most popular with my share library I keep at work! 😳
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2018
    This was a timely book to have happened upon during this era of #MeToo. Definitely a one of a kind book. I have never read this sort of science-fiction before and it was strangely liberating and incredibly insightful.

    It is amazing how it takes such a simple exercise of role reversal to make you rethink some of the things you've long accepted as "normal".

    There is one main character in the book that really shows you the progression of change that is occurring in this fictitious society. He goes from living in a world where he ALWAYS feels safe, to living in a world where he is likely to get violently attacked at any moment (and does). Having that sort of mental exercise put into context the violence that we, as women, have to face on a nearly daily basis. And if we are not directly facing it, we are living in constant fear of violence against us.

    The UN recently released a report titled a Global Study on Homicide: Gender-related killing of women and girls. One of the key findings of this study was that of the 87,000 intentionally killed women in 2017, more than half of them (58%) were killed by intimate partners or family members. This study made headlines because it was stated that in the four regions of the world with the highest share of murdered women, the home was the most likely place for a woman to be killed. To put this into context, women and girls account for only 20% of total homicides. And only one out of every five homicides at the global level is perpetuated by an intimate partner or family member. However, women and girls make up the vast majority of those deaths (64%).

    The Power gives the reader the opportunity to imagine what the world would look like if women no longer had to fear for their lives. If women no longer had to fear for their lives in their own homes. If women no longer had to fear their significant other or their family members.

    There is this particularly powerful scene in the book where a governmental official realizes during a meeting that she is the most powerful person in the room. That if she wanted to she could do anything she wanted to anyone she wanted. The internal discussion she has with herself is incredible because she thinks to herself, "Is this how men have always felt?".

    All in all, a great read and highly recommended.

    Additionally, I highly recommend checking out these two French films that do a similar mind experiment: Oppressed Majority and I Am Not An Easy Man.
    43 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2024
    The plot of this book is great and I loved the comment on society but it is also a tough read. Lots of violence and SA and at some point I was just trying to finish so it would be over 😅 still recommend though, just go in prepared.
    3 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2023
    I bought this book because I don't have the cable channel that shows the drama that is based on the book. I read the reviews of the show, so I know a little bit about the show, but I wanted to read the book, and I did.
    The show appears to be different from the book; characters are changed, but that is all I can see.
    The book is complicated, but not too much. You must read the beginning, even though it looks like a foreword from the author; it is not. It sets up the premise of the book, which is a man writing a history of today's time, but from his vantage point of 5000 years in our future.
    In today's time, teen girls who have experienced menarche develop the ability to send electric shocks through their hands. Some girls have more "power" than others, and girls and women who have the power can trigger it in older women. Obviously, this changes the dynamic between males and females: teen girls, who are (in real life, today) most likely to be the victims of sexual abuse, now have the ability to at least defend themselves, and if they so choose, to punish their abusers. Girls and women no longer have to put up with catcalls and gropers on transportation and other public places.
    This changes the politics of the world, too, since this is a world-wide phenomenon.
    The would-be historian and his female mentor share insights into what happened 5000 years in their past, an event that totally flipped the male-female dynamic in the world. But to say more would be to give away too much, and I really want people to read it.
    The language is rough: a great deal of cursing, but nothing that I haven't read before. If the f-bomb offends you, as it does some people (and that's okay), then you might want to avoid this book. I have some dear relatives who would not like this book for that reason, and they might find the social implications of "The Power" to be disturbing.
    But if you like to think, you like to explore social and gender roles, and you don't mind rough language and some mild violence, I recommend this book.
    24 people found this helpful
    Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
  • SUSAN M.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read!
    Reviewed in Canada on June 11, 2024
    Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
  • Stomiidae
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente libro
    Reviewed in Mexico on April 4, 2023
    Este libro es BUENÍSIMO me tuvo enganchada de principio a fin, y me hizo reflexionar mucho acerca de las mujeres, el poder, y el sexismo.
    Se lo recomendaría a quien sea que le guste la ciencia ficción, pero más aún si eres mujer y MÁS si eres feminista. Excelente entretenimiento 5/5
  • Alianna
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great story
    Reviewed in France on August 25, 2024
    Riveting and original plot. I loved it.
  • Elisabetta
    5.0 out of 5 stars Mindblowing
    Reviewed in Italy on March 12, 2024
    Can't stop thinking about it. A great book!
  • TG
    5.0 out of 5 stars Libro súper interesante
    Reviewed in Spain on February 28, 2023
    Súper interesante el enfoque que le dan

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