Naomi Alderman: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Naomi Alderman writes across three careers at once: literary novels of Orthodox Jewish London, speculative fiction that won the Women's Prize, and narrative game design from Perplex City to Zombies, Run!. This mix traces all three — the Atwood mentorship, the Talmudic and Josephan source-texts beneath her historical fiction, the Hendon streets of Disobedience, and the alternate-reality-game lineage that shaped her sense of story as something players inhabit.

The Kynda mix for Naomi Alderman

• Key Influence · The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985). Atwood mentored Alderman through the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in 2012–13, a period during which The Power took shape; the two later co-wrote a serialised zombie story online. The Handmaid's Tale is the obvious structural ancestor of The Power: a gendered dystopia framed by a sceptical scholarly apparatus, with Alderman's framing correspondence between Neil and Naomi echoing Atwood's Gileadean Symposium epilogue.
• Influencia Obscura · The Female Man by Joanna Russ (1975). Russ's furious, formally shattered novel of four women from divergent timelines — including the all-female Whileaway and the literal war between sexes on Manland — is the radical feminist SF underlayer beneath The Power's premise. Where Atwood imagines women's subjugation, Russ imagined inverted and separated power, and her comic rage at the reader's assumptions is the register Alderman's electrostatic uprising keeps reaching for.
• Local Roots · The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (2010). Alderman grew up in Hendon, north-west London, in an Orthodox Jewish family, and Disobedience maps that specific world of shul politics, Shabbat tables and communal surveillance. Jacobson is the presiding figure of Anglo-Jewish fiction in the same city, working the same seam of comic self-interrogation about belief, belonging and what it costs to leave — the territory Alderman entered from the women's side of the mechitza.
• Beyond the Medium · The Jewish War by Flavius Josephus (75). The Liars' Gospel retells the year of Yehoshuah's death through four narrators in a Judea sweltering under Roman occupation, and its texture — Temple sacrifice logistics, zealot factions, the politics of the priesthood — comes from the first-century historian who lived it and defected to Rome. Josephus supplies the brutal civic detail that lets Alderman strip the Gospels of theology and restore them to an occupied province.
• Peer · The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (2007). Hall's novel of a separatist women's commune arming itself against an authoritarian British state arrived a decade before The Power and won the Tiptree Award, marking the same contemporary British turn toward feminist dystopia written as literary fiction. Both writers refuse to make their women innocent once armed; Hall's Jackie Nixon is the direct forebear of Alderman's Mother Eve and Roxy.
• From the Canon · Disobedience by Naomi Alderman (2006). Her debut, written out of her Hendon Orthodox upbringing, won the Orange Award for New Writers and was filmed by Sebastián Lelio with Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. Ronit's return for her rabbi father's funeral, and her affair with Esti, set every later theme in place: inherited scripture, the cost of leaving a community, and women who break a law that was written without them in mind.
• Key Collaborator · A History of the Future in 100 Objects by Adrian Hon (2013). Hon co-founded Six to Start and created Zombies, Run! with Alderman as lead writer in 2012, the running app whose audio-drama episodes turned exercise into serialised fiction and reached millions of players. His speculative catalogue of imagined future artefacts shows the design intelligence behind that partnership: world-building through objects and documents, the same technique Alderman uses in her novels' invented archaeology.
• Legacy · Vox by Christina Dalcher (2018). Published the year after The Power took the Women's Prize, Dalcher's novel of American women limited to a hundred words a day arrived in the wave of high-concept feminist dystopias that Alderman's success opened commercially. Its single-rule premise, near-present setting and thriller pacing follow the template The Power established for making speculative argument sell as mainstream fiction.

What influenced Naomi Alderman

• Me Too movement. The article attributes to Alderman a citation of the Me Too movement as inspiration. “With its message of female empowerment – young women taking revenge for sexual abuse into their own hands – The Power landed just as the #MeToo movement was gaining momentum.” (The Guardian)
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985). The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood) — titan for Naomi Alderman “In 2012, Alderman was selected as a protégé by Margaret Atwood as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, an international philanthropic programme that pairs masters in their disciplines with emerging talents for a year of …” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. Allardice reports that Alderman had Winterson’s novel in mind while writing Disobedience. “Alderman had Jeanette Winterson ’s fictional account of discovering her sexuality in a religiously fundamentalist household, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, in mind while she was writing it.” (The Guardian)
• The Female Man by Joanna Russ (1975). The Female Man (Joanna Russ) — ghost for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962). The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing) — titan for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• The Story of the Jews by Simon Schama (2013). The Story of the Jews (Simon Schama) — culture for Naomi Alderman (themoviedb.org)
• Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy (1976). Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy) — ghost for Naomi Alderman (wikidata.org)
• The Jewish War by Flavius Josephus (75). The Jewish War (Flavius Josephus) — culture for Naomi Alderman (wikidata.org)
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969). The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin) — titan for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• The Beast by Sean Stewart (2001). The Beast (Sean Stewart) — culture for Naomi Alderman

Peers and kindred spirits

• Margaret Atwood. Atwood and Alderman co-wrote a story. (also via The Handmaid's Tale) “We co-wrote a serial story together on the literacy-encouraging site Wattpad. Atwood guest-starred in the zombie running game app I co‑created.” (The Guardian)
• Royal Society of Literature. Alderman became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. “Fellows > Alderman, Naomi Naomi Alderman Elected: 2018” (Royal Society of Literature)
• Jey Biddulph. Alderman wrote the narrative and Biddulph created the visuals for the same project. “Historia hipertextual creada por la escritora Naomi Alderman y el diseñador de videojuegos Jey Biddulph para fomentar la lectura entre los jóvenes del Reino Unido.” (Ciberia Project)
• Bath Spa University. Alderman held a creative-writing professorship at Bath Spa University. “Naomi Alderman Professor of Creative Writing School: School of Creative and Cultural Arts” (Bath Spa University)
• Six to Start. Armitstead identifies Six to Start as Alderman’s collaborator on Zombies, Run!. “The only time she departs from this routine is during the two months of each year when she is working on a new season of the augmented reality game, Zombies, Run! on which she is co-creator and lead writer, with games developer Six to St…” (The Guardian)
• Sacred Lies by Raelle Tucker (2018). Sacred Lies (Raelle Tucker) — collaborator for Naomi Alderman (themoviedb.org)
• A History of the Future in 100 Objects by Adrian Hon (2013). A History of the Future in 100 Objects (Adrian Hon) — collaborator for Naomi Alderman “In September 2011, the Six to Start team, with writer Naomi Alderman, launched a Kickstarter for mobile exergame Zombies, Run!, a running game and audio adventure that uses a phone's GPS and accelerometer.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway (2008). The Gone-Away World (Nick Harkaway) — peer for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (2007). The Carhullan Army (Sarah Hall) — peer for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant (2000). When I Lived in Modern Times (Linda Grant) — geography for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000). White Teeth (Zadie Smith) — geography for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (2010). The Finkler Question (Howard Jacobson) — geography for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• The City & the City by China Miéville (2009). The City & the City (China Miéville) — peer for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• The Men by Sandra Newman (2022). The Men (Sandra Newman) — collaborator for Naomi Alderman

Who Naomi Alderman influenced

• Vox by Christina Dalcher (2018). Vox (Christina Dalcher) — legacy for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)
• Afterland by Lauren Beukes (2020). Afterland (Lauren Beukes) — legacy for Naomi Alderman (openlibrary.org)