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The Power (Alderman novel)

The Power AuthorNaomi AldermanIllustratorMarsh DaviesCountryGreat BritainGenreScience fictionPublisherViking2016Pages400 ppISBN978-0-316-54761-1
The Power is a 2016 science fiction novel by the British writer Naomi Alderman. Its central premise is women developing the ability to release electrical jolts from their fingers, thus leading them to become the dominant gender.

In June 2017, The Power won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. The book was also named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017.

Plot
In a matriarchal society, a gushing male writer writes to an influential author about his fictional account of how the matriarchy came to be. Five thousand years earlier (in our current time), men dominated society. Then, stories emerge of women who can protect themselves with an electrical power. And more than protection, they can attack, torture, even kill.

Roxy is an English teenager whose mother is attacked. She manages to defend herself, injuring one attacker but the other beats her up and kills her mother. Tunde is an aspiring journalist in Nigeria who is attracted to Enuma. Before he can initiate, she zaps him and then kisses him while he is paralyzed. He starts to film women using their emerging power and publishing it online. Margot is a mayor in Wisconsin who discovers her daughter Jocelyn is also developing these powers. Allie is a girl who is attacked by her foster father and kills him with her powers before taking refuge in a convent.

As the powers emerge across the world, Tunde's reputation allows him unique access to document the turmoil in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Allie discovers how to use her powers to heal and becomes an influential religious leader, propagating a matriarchal doctrine. Margot develops training camps for the women to use their powers. As women in Moldova start paramilitary groups, Tatiana, the president's wife steps in to take over the country. Awadi-Atif develops a rebel army to oppose her. Tunde almost gets raped in India. Margot becomes Governor by using her powers to silence her male counterpart during a debate. A drug called glitter enhances the power of women's skeins, which are the organs responsible for their electrical powers. UrbanDox gains influence as an anti-woman activist. Roxy takes over her father's criminal enterprise. Tatiana begins to behave erratically, leading mass killings of men.

Allie kills Tatiana and decides to take the world back to the Stone Age to reset its growth and structures based on women's powers.

The influential author responds to the young male writer telling him it is a worthy book but that he should publish it under a woman's name.

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