Strength

The novel received the Baileys Women’s Prize (the award is 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 decorum, power structures and geopolitical arrangements. These changes, along with the whole world, are experienced 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 this paradigm shift. “Strength” by Naomi Alderman is “The Handmaid’s Tale” for a new era, a witty and brutally sober story about how the world will change if the gender balance of power simply flips upside down. Are fundamental changes coming? Will the world become better? This novel is 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 leaves it, or is it—an integral part of human nature?