BOOK NOTES – ON TIME TRAVELLING
was struggling with Gabriele Tergit’s , when Octavia E. Butler kept appearing across my literary spectrum. First, as a personal recommendation from an acquaintance, followed by a couple of must-read lists. Then I remembered reading a interview with another author who named her as an inspiration. Clearly, I needed a break from my engagement Berlin, with its eerie parallels to the city’s current affairs. Butler is known for her dystopian fiction, a ground breaking science-fiction writer who infused the genre with a much needed intersectional perspective. Determined to overcome my resistance to speculative fiction I sought out , Butler’s 1979 novel. is the story of Dana, a black woman writer, who finds herself transported back to 1815, to a Maryland plantation where her ancestors live. Throughout the book she must navigate the reality of slavery as a black woman from another time, while she goes back and forth between 1976 Los Angeles and the Antebellum South. Butler seamlessly intertwines a multitude of issues, from race, gender, power and knowledge to the specificity of personal biography, to compile a rounded narrative that stands the test of time. I greatly enjoyed reading , a time travelling tale that didn’t feel speculative, but rather rooted in a deep recognition of what plagues us as a society and a wish to unravel the choices we make, both personal and political, in our daily lives.
