The Power

The novel received the Baileys Women’s Prize (an award given to female authors). What would happen to the world if women suddenly became physically stronger than men? Now men are the weaker sex. And everything changes: ideas about gender, strength, weakness, rights, duties, and propriety, power structures, and geopolitical arrangements.

These changes are experienced together with the world by a preacher of a new religion, the daughter of a London gangster, a Nigerian stringer, and an American official with political ambitions — they were the first to experience the paradigm shift. “The Power” by Naomi Alderman is “The Handmaid’s Tale” for a new era; it is a witty and brutally honest story about how the world might change if the gender balance of power were simply turned upside down.

Are fundamental changes coming? Will the world be better?

This is a novel about the nature of power and what it does to people, about the nature of violence.

Is it possible to change the world so that violence as such is eliminated, or is it an inherent aspect of human nature?