The following version of this book was sued to create this study guide: Alderman, Naomi. The Power. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2017.

The novel opens with an introductory frame narrative. In a matriarchal society, a male writer named Neil has written a novelization of potential historical events taking place before a cataclysmic event that occurred about 5,000 years prior. The novel proper begins with Roxy, an English teenager, who discovers one day that she has new, seemingly supernatural powers that allow her to inflict pain. Two men break in and kill her mother, and Roxy is too untrained with her new powers to stop them. In Nigeria, an aspiring journalist named Tunde begins to document the emergence of these new powers in women. In the United States, Margot—a mayor in Wisconsin—discovers that her daughter seems to be developing these powers as well. In the southern United States, a teenage girl named Allie runs away from her abusive adoptive parents after discovering that she has the powers as well. She takes refuge in a convent.

The powers eventually emerge in all women around the world. Tunde becomes a professional journalist and travels the world to document the social and political upheavals caused by the changes. In Saudi Arabia, women clash violently with the government, which uses its military to suppress female rioters and protesters. Allie finds that she can use her powers to heal people, and she becomes a revered religious figure. She begins to promote the idea of female supremacy having religious and scriptural basis. Margot begins working with a private security and defense firm to establish training camps for young women. In Moldova, paramilitary groups of women begin to roam the country. The President’s wife, Tatiana Moskalev, kills her husband and assumes power, uniting the women under her authority.

A few years later, Awadi-Atif, a member of the Moldovan royal family, forms a rebel army to oppose Tatiana. Tunde goes to India to document the unrest and riots there, and he is almost raped by a woman who attacks him with her powers. Margot campaigns to be the Governor of Wisconsin, and after she uses her powers to hurt her opponent during a televised debate, she is seen as strong and is elected. Meanwhile, Roxy, whose father is a British crime boss, begins manufacturing a drug called Glitter that enhances women’s powers. Tunde meets with an anti-women activist who goes by the name UrbanDox. UrbanDox says that he believes women will mass-exterminate most men once they take power of the world’s governments. Allie, Margot, and Roxy become allies with Tatiana, as they support her in the fight against Awadi-Atif. Roxy eventually discovers that her father, Bernie, was the one who ordered her mother’s killing. She forcibly takes over Bernie’s crime organization.

A few years later, Allie becomes concerned that Tatiana may be growing, as Allie witnesses Tatiana sometimes behaving erratically. Tunde comes to Moldova to report on the war and sociopolitical unrest. While he is there, Moldova institutes strict laws limiting the agency of men in the country. Roxy is kidnapped one day by her father, who has the biological source of Roxy’s powers removed. Bernie then retakes control of his criminal organization. Tunde discovers mass killings of men in Moldova. He is kidnapped by a violent group of women, but he is saved by Roxy. Allie eventually kills Tatiana and takes control of Moldova. She decides that the only way to ensure female supremacy in the world is to incite global warfare, thus blowing civilization back to the Stone Age and forcing it to progress again but in a world where women have their new powers. The novel ends with the frame narrative. Neil tells Naomi that the point of his book is to show how present-day power structures, which are based on gender divisions, originate in the brutality of less advanced times. Naomi likes the book and suggests that Neil publish it under a woman’s name so that it will not be dismissed for having been written by a man.