‘A book that shifted my life… Epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant’ VIOLA DAVIS on Wild Seed
‘A literary pioneer’ VANITY FAIR on Octavia E. Butler
—
The child’s name is Mary, and her father, Doro, is immortal.
For thousands of years, Doro has experimented with humans, pursuing rare telepathic traits to create perfect beings who obey his every command. Mary is the result: a young Black woman growing up on the rough outskirts of Los Angeles in the 1970s – with no idea of the power she holds.
Doro knows he must handle Mary carefully or risk her ending like his previous experiments – dead, either by her own hand or his. What he doesn’t suspect is that Mary’s abilities may soon overpower his own.
But as Mary comes of age, she seeks connection. Linking her own mind with six other telepaths, she creates the first Pattern – and shifts the course of humanity forever.
A PATTERNIST NOVEL: BOOK TWO
‘A literary pioneer’ VANITY FAIR on Octavia E. Butler
—
The child’s name is Mary, and her father, Doro, is immortal.
For thousands of years, Doro has experimented with humans, pursuing rare telepathic traits to create perfect beings who obey his every command. Mary is the result: a young Black woman growing up on the rough outskirts of Los Angeles in the 1970s – with no idea of the power she holds.
Doro knows he must handle Mary carefully or risk her ending like his previous experiments – dead, either by her own hand or his. What he doesn’t suspect is that Mary’s abilities may soon overpower his own.
But as Mary comes of age, she seeks connection. Linking her own mind with six other telepaths, she creates the first Pattern – and shifts the course of humanity forever.
A PATTERNIST NOVEL: BOOK TWO
Reviews
[A] must-read novel
[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human
Kindred is that rare magical artifact . . . the novel one returns to, again and again
A dark, compelling and still horribly resonant time travel story
A searing, caustic examination of bizarre and alien practices on the third planet from the sun
Butler's books are exceptional
Butler's prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision
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
Few writers in our field are so good at blending page-turners with philosophical questions so seamlessly
If you haven't read Butler, you don't yet understand how rich the possibilities of science fiction can be
Impossible to turn away from once you've devoured the first few pages
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
One cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art
One of the most original, thought-provoking works examining race and identity
One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had
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
