KINDRED, by Octavia E. Butler

(originally posted on June 26, 2008)

This book is as old as I am but it feels as fresh, as disturbing and as incisive as it must have when it was first published. Butler takes time travel to its logical extension, showing how 26 year old writer Dana's travels back to the antebellum South of the 1800s exposes her to the brutality and the reality of slavery - and by extension, makes the reader feel it and become privy to its ugly realities. This is and should be considered a work of science fiction, but Butler's genius is how she packs so much social commentary in layer after layer.