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Octavia E. Butler

Kindred MP3 CD – MP3 Audio, Aug. 18 2015

by Octavia E. Butler (Author)

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The first science fiction written by a black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge shes been given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother.

Language

English
Publisher

Recorded Books on Brilliance Audio
Publication date

Aug. 18 2015
Dimensions

17.15 x 13.97 x 1.27 cm
ISBN-10

1501260103
ISBN-13

978-1501260100
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Product description

About the Author

Octavia E. Butler is author of many novels, including Adulthood Rites and The Parable of the Sower. She is the winner of the Nebula Award and twice winner of the Hugo Award.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Recorded Books on Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (Aug. 18 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501260103
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501260100
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 81.6 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 17.15 x 13.97 x 1.27 cm

Customer Reviews:
16,381 ratings

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Octavia E. Butler

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OCTAVIA E. BUTLER (1947–2006) was the renowned author of numerous ground-breaking novels, including Kindred, Wild Seed, and Parable of the Sower. Recipient of the Locus, Hugo and Nebula awards, and a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work, in 1995 she became the first science- fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship ‘Genius Grant’. A pioneer of her genre, Octavia’s dystopian novels explore myriad themes of Black injustice, women’s rights, global warming and political disparity, and her work is taught in over two hundred colleges and universities nationwide.

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4.5 out of 5

16,381 global ratings

5 star		64%
4 star		23%
3 star		10%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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Michele C

Amazing

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 28, 2020

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I loved this book. It was well written & I could not put it down. Amazing story. Some of the details about slavery were heart wrenching & painful, but I could see that the author researched the history of slavery very well. I enjoyed the way, she allowed Dana the main character in the story to time travel from 1976 back to the 19th century to experience the ugliness of slavery. This was my 1st time for ordering an ebook format, I don't think I will order ebooks any time soon. There were too many little hiccups/ headaches involved with this ebook format. I am a vivid reader who will stick to reading hardcopy books.

4 people found this helpful

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Rubia

Best book I read all Summer 2018

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 27, 2018

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As someone with a MA in English Literature it really saddened me that I had never heard of Octavia Butler and this amazing novel. I was stunned by how advanced her thinking is around race and culture. This was a novel ahead of its time for the United States anyway. This is definitely a post-racial novel written by a brilliant writer. I bought my son the new graphic novel version of it too. It should be read in every high school. The depiction of slavery and its complicated human relationships and its aching brutality are beyond brilliant. Do not be fooled into thinking its silly, as the time travel seems odd at first, but this device ends up being part and parcel of the statement the author makes. It has stayed with me. Read this book.

4 people found this helpful

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Malcolm McLean

A powerful portrayal of a dark time

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 24, 2021

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Butler adapted a sci-fi trope of time travel to give a gritty and vivid portrait of the antebellum southern plantation through the eyes of a 20th century Black woman and her white husband. America is still coming to terms with that legacy. This book helps to keep that process away from denial or obfuscation.

3 people found this helpful

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Ronald W. Maron

Slavery and time travel; a confusing combination!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 29, 2011

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After reading about Ms. Butler's reputation for her quality writing skills, I was looking forward to reading my copy of "Kindred". While the story aptly covered the deplorable conditions connected with antebellum slavery, the science fiction portion of this tale, the transition between different eras, was quite awkward and obtuse in both its manner and believability. If the author wanted to tell a tale of forced labor conditions she simply should have produced ah historical novel rather than attempting to add the science fiction addendum. Furthermore, if the heroine was returning to the plantation in order to ensure that her relative from the past, Hagar, was safely born, why did the author have her return once this birth had occurred? The child was freed at that point and was safe from immediate harm. This last return unfortunately forced the author to write a highly bizarre and useless ending that was much out of character with the rest of the text. Lastly, the character development was neither complete nor compelling regarding Dana. She came across as rather flat, lacking in the courage associated with a person of character and was always carping about her difficulties with life at the cost of ignoring those in much worse conditions around her.

I will not give up on the author with this single reading but, rather, will purchase another one of her books with the hopes that this was not one of her finest and that 'the best is yet to come'.

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LAS

Antebellum south with all its evils

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 1, 2021

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Ms. Butler uses the device of time travel to juxtapose life in the antebellum south with her modern day,where she is in an interracial relationship. Her modern experience appears ideal but we know this is not universal . The racist past depicts all the evils OS slavery that should ever be forgotten.

2 people found this helpful

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pegi

Interesting to imagine that these types of things actually happened. I felt like Dana could really exist in today's tines.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 15, 2017

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Interesting to imagine that these types of things actually happened . I felt like Dana could really exist in today's times. I think anyone who wants to try to understand what life must have been as a black person in the 1800's would get a small glimpse of reality here .

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 2, 2020

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I was skeptical at first when I purchased this book. Even the first few pages I wasn’t sure BUT out of nowhere it had me hooked. I read this book in 2 days I could not put it down. I wish I knew what happened to some of the characters but all in all...BRAVO!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 3, 2015

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I have to agree with the other reviewers who commented that time travel books usually do not interest them; however, this book was an exception for me as well. The large majority of the setting takes place in the antebellum south, not the present day of 1976.

This book was very well written and the characters seemed very real. The ugliness of American history is not sugar coated in any way. This book would be great to study for students in grades 9 and up.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Navanski

I must be missing something

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 28, 2020

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There are some absolutely golden reviews for this book.
I found the way the book was written was simple and easy to read. This created a distinct impression that this book was aimed at an audience which were still at school. The fact that the book covered the subject of slavery, a subject which should be explored by young students, added to the impression that this was a school text book.
The book breaks no new ground in terms of the way it handles time travel. I had worked out the connection between the first and last chapters very early in the book.
Kindred covers the subject of slavery as it should, with pain, hate and distaste. I think the problem I have is that this topic, due to my personal chronology, has been well covered by the likes of Roots by Alex Haley. If I had read Kindred in the late 70s, when it was written then perhaps the reverse would be true.
I enjoyed the book, don't misunderstand me, but Kindred did not generate the enthusiasm that I was expecting.

20 people found this helpful

MalcolmM

Powerful if uncomfortable reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 9, 2022

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Very powerful stuff. I really appreciated this book & I use the word "appreciated" advisedly as at times I found it too difficult to stomach for "enjoyed" to be appropriate. The story has the central character going back & forth in time but despite this, doesn't read like science fiction. The author merely uses that as a device to compare the flavour of the two time periods. Its often brutal but the characters aren't simply polarised into good vs evil. They're more complex than that & you get a real sense of people average for their time being quite willing to inflict horrors on another human while their conditioning tells them its quite normal & proper. In some ways I found that aspect even worse than if they'd been portrayed as out & out evil. I found this book really quite distressing but I absolutely don't regret reading it. It contains very little facts I wasn't already aware of but it turned dry facts into a reality I could feel. Should be part of every schools curriculum.

7 people found this helpful

Luke Dennison

Impassioned page turner

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 14, 2022

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This was a quick, entertaining and passionate read. It's main characters are really well drawn, and as the book goes on the situation around race, slaves and all that comes with it builds and becomes gripping.

This book on my kindle is subtitled "the ground breaking masterpiece" and maybe it was ground breaking but it's not a masterpiece and that in my opinion is because the minor characters in this book don't take on enough personality until the final third and I didn't necessarily buy into some of the Sub plots. One of the major criticisms of this book on Goodreads has been the books inadequacies of the science fiction angles. I need to be clear here, this is not a science fiction book but a book about slavery using time travel as a literary device. Was that device successful? For me, just about but I occasionally worried it was all just a gimmick.

Overall though this is a good read and I enjoyed it. Masterpiece? Not for me.

8 people found this helpful

Stephanie Jane (Literary Flits)

A deserved classic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 9, 2021

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For much of the time I spent reading Kindred, I completely forgot that this novel was written in the 1970s - some 45 years ago now. Octavia Butler's ideas and prose style still feel fresh and I was glad that this important novel hasn't suffered from being 'of its time'. Other 1970s novels I've read have seemed dated but, in fact, Kindred came across as just as relevant now as it must have been to its first readers. On a personal level that was a good thing because it meant I could fully appreciate the story and everything it wanted to impart to me. I was also very aware though that this also illustrates how little progress has been achieved in terms of racial and gender equality over the past four decades. Slavery such as Dana experiences on the plantation may no longer be legal, but the attitudes it fostered are still very much with us as can be seen by the necessity for movements such as BLM.

Dana and Rufus are complicated, nuanced characters who find themselves tethered to each other by an inexplicable bond. I was surprised at how easily I could accept and believe in the time travel premise and think that this was achieved due to the authenticity of the main characters. I often felt that Dana could do more to help the slaves with whom she lived, but she isn't a 'superhero' movie character, rather a confused and frightened woman who struggles to adapt to the cold callousness of the Weylin family. To realise that she shares ancestry from both Rufus and Alice must have been so difficult to come to terms with, yet I loved seeing how Butler gives Dana hints of each of those characters within her own makeup.

Other than its scenes of extreme violence, Kindred was an easier read than I had expected. I think I was influenced by its reputation to expect a philosophical literary novel, but it is actually a compelling story that keeps up an exciting pace throughout. Butler was an accomplished storyteller who manages to impart what she wants to say without breaking the stride of her tale so, while I was left with plenty to think about after finishing Kindred, I never felt hectored or lectured whilst reading. A deserved classic.

7 people found this helpful

Scarlet Aingeal

I'm keen to read more by Octavia Butler, but I'm left with questions...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 8, 2017

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I went into this expecting it to blow my socks off as I've seen many people raving about it, but that's not what happened. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed it, it was engaging, the plot was great, and I flew through it in no time, but it wasn't what I was expecting.

The writing was simplistic and easily readable. It didn't require much concentration or dedication to get through and I wasn't expecting that. I don't know if I am disappointed because my expectations were too high, or because the author approached the important topics of race relations and slavery using such simplistic language and writing style.

I went into it with something more complex in mind, a deeper hard to read story and message, but I feel it was overly simplified and somewhat dumbed down in order to entertain or make it a lighter read. I highly doubt it was used as a plot device for entertainment purposes, but at times it felt that way. Perhaps it's a victim of its time, had it been written more recently this wouldn't have been the case as today's readers are more open to the truth of the brutality and realism of slavery.

The above makes it sound like I didn't enjoy it, I did and I'm keen to read more by Octavia Butler, but I'm left with questions. The time travel just happens, there's no explanation given for Dana being pulled back in time. How was Rufus able to pull Dana back to his time? What effect did her interactions with her past relatives have on her present timeline, family, and bloodline?

33 people found this helpful

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Kindred MP3 CD – MP3 Audio, Aug. 18 2015

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Octavia E. Butler

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