This “thought-provoking and . . . unabashedly entertaining . . . novel defies conventional expectations and exists, brilliantly and defiantly, on its own terms” (Sarah Lotz, New York Times Book Review).
Lake Geneva, 1816. Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley is inspired to write a story about a scientist who creates a new life-form. In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI and carrying out some experiments of his own in a vast underground network of tunnels. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his mom again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead . . . but waiting to return to life.
Since her astonishing debut Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide acclaim as “one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time” (Elle). In Frankissstein, she shares an audacious love story that weaves together disparate lives into an exploration of transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and queer love.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize
Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester, England. After graduating from Oxford University she published her first novel at 25, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, to widespread acclaim and a BAFTA for her BBC TV adaption. Twenty-seven years later she revisited 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 believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.