When Naomi Alderman’s speculative novel The Power came out in 2017, the Washington Post hailed it as “our era’s ‘Handmaid’s Tale.’” The 378-page book is an epic exploration of power and gender, set in a world where women suddenly acquire the ability to generate electricity from their hands. As women learn to use their newfound strength, they start to overthrow, then oppress, the men who once dominated them. The book follows several characters in their entangled stories: politician Margot and her daughter Jos, gangster’s daughter Roxy, false prophet Allie, and journalist Tunde, the one male protagonist.
In the US, the book came out in October 2017, several months into Donald Trump’s presidency and right alongside the surging #MeToo movement. Amid incessant news about the sexually predatory behavior of prominent men, many readers found catharsis in The Power’s vision of a world where women lived without fear or self-diminishment. In one particularly prescient chapter, Margot gets so angry during a gubernatorial debate that she electrocutes her opponent onstage; though she assumes her outburst will cost her the race, she ends up winning easily. Vogue called it “genius … a reversal of the 2016 presidential election debates so delicious it stings.”
The TV adaptation of The Power premieres on Prime Video tomorrow. The show faces a dilemma: Its source material is now old enough to feel dated, but too recent to be classic. How will it update a book that seemed so timely seven years ago? Or will it fumble because it can’t figure out how?
On the one hand, the story’s bleakness might work better now than it did then. In 2017, Hillary Clinton hero worship lingered among her grieving supporters and the “Nevertheless, she persisted” set; in 2023, it has fallen out of favor. Among progressives, it’s trendier to remember Clinton as “a neoliberal war hawk,” not a feminist trailblazer. It makes The Power’s arc more fitting: As governor, Margot develops private military training camps for teenage girls, whom she then ships out to war en masse, profiting from her defense contracts. Turns out Margot is a war hawk too. With The Power, Alderman rejects the idea that the world would be a better place if women like Clinton led it; she blows past the kitschy ethos of “the future is female.”