Editions

Frankissstein

Frankissstein

  • A Love Story

***LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019***
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 2020**
**LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE 2020**

'Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.'

Inspired by Mary Shelley's gothic classic Frankenstein, discover this audacious new novel about the bodies we live in and the bodies we desire.

As Brexit grips Britain, Ry, a young transgender doctor, is falling in love. The object of their misguided affection: the celebrated AI-specialist, Professor Victor Stein. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his Mum again, is set to make his fortune with a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere.

Ranging from 1816, when nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley pens her radical first novel, to a cryonics facility in present-day Arizona where the dead wait to return to life, Frankissstein shows us how much closer we are to the future than we realise.

'Intelligent and inventive...very funny' The Times

'One of the most gifted writers working today' New York Times

Reviews

  • 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.

    Financial Times

  • 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.

    Guardian, *Book of the Week*

  • 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.

    New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

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About the Author

Jeanette Winterson

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.

Jeanette Winterson

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