
Kindred
Gift Edition
Octavia Butler(Author)
Beacon Press
Published on 20. September 2022
Book
Hardback
288 pages
978-0-8070-0692-4 (ISBN)
Description
One of the 100 best novels ever published in English (The Guardian)· One of the most consequential novels of the past 100 years (The Atlantic) · One of the most essential books published in the U.S. since 1776 (Publishers Weekly)
The New York Times best-selling author’s time-travel classic that makes us feel the horrors of American slavery and indicts our country’s lack of progress on racial reconciliation
“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”
Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.
Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).
The New York Times best-selling author’s time-travel classic that makes us feel the horrors of American slavery and indicts our country’s lack of progress on racial reconciliation
“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”
Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.
Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Boston, MA
United States
Target group
US School Grade: Ninth Grade and over, Interest Age: From 14 years
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 208 mm
Width: 139 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
410 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8070-0692-4 (9780807006924)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Octavia E. Butler
Content
Prologue
The River
The Fire
The Fall
The Fight
The Storm
The Rope
Epilogue
Reader’s Guide
Critical Essay
Discussion Questions
The River
The Fire
The Fall
The Fight
The Storm
The Rope
Epilogue
Reader’s Guide
Critical Essay
Discussion Questions