Frankissstein

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019

From 'one of the most gifted writers working today' (New York Times) comes an audacious new novel about the bodies we live in and the bodies we desire

In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love - against their better judgement - with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI.

Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with Mum again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere.

Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryonics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead... but waiting to return to life.

But the scene is set in 1816, when nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley writes a story about creating a non-biological life-form. 'Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.'

What will happen when homo sapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realise. Funny and furious, bold and clear-sighted, Frankissstein is a love story about life itself.

Long-listed for Booker Prize 2019 (UK)

Refreshingly, Jeanette Winterson's Frankisstein... is a wildly inventive reimagining of one of science fiction's most beloved stories... lyrical, gloriously raunchy, pulpy and absurd. New Scientist Intelligent and inventive... Frankisstein is very funny. There has always been a fine line between horror and high camp, and this is a boundary that Winterson gleefully exploits. The Times Winterson reboots Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for the 21st Century, launching us into a hold-on-to-your hat modern-day horror story about very modern-day neuroses and issues. BBC News Winterson has had a surge of inventiveness... Frankissstein gamely links arms with the zeitgeist. {it} is a book that seeks to shift our perspective on humanity and the purpose of being human in the most darkly entertaining way... gloriously well observed .. I found myself vibrating with laughter. Observer, Book of the Day Astonishing. Bold. Teeming with wit and intellectual prowess. Winterson is a literary giant. She remains one of my favourite writers. Yes, the book we have all been waiting for. Yes, everything Winterson has always done so well. Yes, above and beyond anything that is yet to be written. A modern take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it's a fascinating and engrossing look at AI, science, gender fluidity and, ultimately, what it really means to be human. -- Nicola Sturgeon New Statesman, Books of the Year Here, hard science and dreamy Romanticism exist in both tension and harmony... Frankissstein abounds with invention... this is a work of both pleasure and profundity, robustly and skilfully structured, and suffused with all Winterson's usual preoccupations - gender, language, sexuality, the limits of individual liberty and the life of ideas. -- Sam Byers Guardian, Book of the Week A riotous reimagining with an energy and passion all of its own that reanimates Frankenstein as a cautionary tale for a contemporary moment dominated by debates about Brexit, gender, artificial intelligence and medical experimentation... While the story has a gripping momentum of its own, it also fizzes with ideas. -- Daisy Hay Financial Times A riotous reimagining with an energy and passion all of its own that reanimates Frankenstein as a cautionary tale for a contemporary moment dominated by debates about Brexit, gender, artificial intelligence and medical experimentation... While the story has a gripping momentum of its own, it also fizzes with ideas. -- Daisy Hay Financial Times

Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. Adopted by Pentecostal parents she was raised to be a missionary. This did and didn't work out.

Discovering early the power of books she left home at 16 to live in a Mini and get on with her education. After graduating from Oxford University she worked for a while in the theatre and published her first novel at 25. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is based on her own upbringing but using herself as a fictional character. She scripted the novel into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. 27 years later she re-visited that material in the bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She has written 10 novels for adults, as well as children's books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London.

She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.

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