Paperback
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
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
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.
'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'
'[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 Ayobami Adebay