A stunning new edition of Book Three of the Patternist series, in which two immortals chase each other across continents and centuries, binding their fates together – and changing the destiny of the human race.
‘A book that shifted my life… Epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant’ VIOLA DAVIS on WILD SEED
‘Butler’s evocative, often troubling novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human’ NEW YORK TIMES
—
In an alternative America, Blake Maslin is a doctor travelling across the Californian desert with his teenage twin daughters. When their car is ambushed, he and the girls are taken captive by armed men demanding urgent medical care.
Transported to an isolated compound, the Maslins meet a collective of people suffering from an unknown and deadly disease. They appear sickly yet possess unnatural strength, torn between the compulsion to infect others or to hold on to their humanity. What Blake and his daughters don’t yet know is how the community came to be there, and who they really are. But the babies born in the compound are undeniably not human.
In the following hours, each of the Maslins must make an impossible choice: risk everything to escape infection and warn the rest of the world – or accept their place in this strange new society.
A PATTERNIST NOVEL: BOOK THREE
‘A book that shifted my life… Epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant’ VIOLA DAVIS on WILD SEED
‘Butler’s evocative, often troubling novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human’ NEW YORK TIMES
—
In an alternative America, Blake Maslin is a doctor travelling across the Californian desert with his teenage twin daughters. When their car is ambushed, he and the girls are taken captive by armed men demanding urgent medical care.
Transported to an isolated compound, the Maslins meet a collective of people suffering from an unknown and deadly disease. They appear sickly yet possess unnatural strength, torn between the compulsion to infect others or to hold on to their humanity. What Blake and his daughters don’t yet know is how the community came to be there, and who they really are. But the babies born in the compound are undeniably not human.
In the following hours, each of the Maslins must make an impossible choice: risk everything to escape infection and warn the rest of the world – or accept their place in this strange new society.
A PATTERNIST NOVEL: BOOK THREE
Reviews
One cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art
[A] must-read novel
One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had
Butler's prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision
[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human
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
Kindred is that rare magical artifact . . . the novel one returns to, again and again
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
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
A searing, caustic examination of bizarre and alien practices on the third planet from the sun
One of the most original, thought-provoking works examining race and identity
If you haven't read Butler, you don't yet understand how rich the possibilities of science fiction can be
Butler's books are exceptional
Few writers in our field are so good at blending page-turners with philosophical questions so seamlessly
A dark, compelling and still horribly resonant time travel story
Impossible to turn away from once you've devoured the first few pages
