Kindred: The ground-breaking masterpiece from the New York Times bestseller

Octavia E. Butler's ground-breaking masterpiece, with an original foreword by Ayòbámi Adébáyò. Now an acclaimed TV series streaming on Disney +

'A marvel of imagination, empathy and detail' NEW YORK TIMES

'The marker you should judge all other time-travelling narratives by' GUARDIAN

'One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had' JUNOT DIAZ

In 1976, Dana dreams of being a writer.
In 1815, she is assumed a slave.

When Dana first meets Rufus on a Maryland plantation, he's drowning. She saves his life - and it will happen again and again.

Neither of them understands his power to summon her whenever his life is threatened, nor the significance of the ties that bind them.

But each time Dana is pulled back to the past, she finds herself confronting secrets she never knew ran through her blood.

PRAISE FOR OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

'Unnervingly prescient and wise' YAA GYASI

'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

'Butler's prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision' GUARDIAN

'Octavia Butler was a visionary' VIOLA DAVIS

'An icon of the Afrofuturism world, envisioning literary realms that placed black characters front and center' VANITY FAIR

'Butler writes with such a familiarity that the alien is welcome and intriguing. She really artfully exposes our human impulse to self-destruct' LUPITA NYONG'O

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
A dark, compelling and still horribly resonant time travel story
[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
One cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art
[A] must-read novel
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
Impossible to turn away from once you've devoured the first few pages
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

Octavia E. Butler was an award-winning writer widely considered the best science-fiction writer of her generation. John Jennings is Associate Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY-Buffalo and has written several works on African American comics creators. Damian Duffy is a cartoonist, writer, letterer and PhD candidate at the Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science and the University of Illinois.

Prologue

The River

The Fire

The Fall

The Fight

The Storm

The Rope

Epilogue

Reader’s Guide
Critical Essay
Discussion Questions