Unwind (2009)
Unwind is a 2009 juvenile fiction book written by Neal Shusterman.
Neal Shusterman builds a near-future America that ended its abortion war with a monstrous compromise: parents may retroactively "unwind" a child between thirteen and eighteen, harvesting every organ so the kid technically never dies. Connor is a troublemaker his parents have given up on. Risa is a ward of the state, cut to save orphanage costs. Lev has been raised to see his own unwinding as a religious tithe. Chance throws the three together on a cross-country run toward their eighteenth birthdays, past which the law can no longer touch them. Cold, fast, and morally serrated.
Quick answers
What is Unwind about?
Neal Shusterman builds a near-future America that ended its abortion war with a monstrous compromise: parents may retroactively "unwind" a child between thirteen and eighteen, harvesting every organ so the kid technically never dies. Connor is a troublemaker his parents have given up on. Risa is a ward of the state, cut to save orphanage costs. Lev has been raised to see his own unwinding as a religious tithe. Chance throws the three together on a cross-country run toward their eighteenth birthdays, past which the law can no longer touch them. Cold, fast, and morally serrated.
When was Unwind published?
Unwind was published on 1 August 2009.
Who made Unwind?
Unwind was written by Neal Shusterman.
Similar books
Unwind in our writing
- Companion guide: YA Dystopias: The Hunger Games and the Decade the Arena Ruled
A few thoughts on Unwind
Fans should try Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro's quiet, devastating novel that walks the same queasy moral ground. The Island trades Shusterman's cold ethics for a chase, with clones bred as spare parts for the rich. For the same queasy body-commerce nerve, Repo! The Genetic Opera stages organ repossession as gothic rock musical.
People raised to have their bodies taken apart for parts
Connor, Risa, and Lev are all headed toward a fate that keeps every part of them alive in someone else. The Island builds its plot around clones grown for exactly that purpose, Never Let Me Go follows children raised with the same quiet dread, Repo! The Genetic Opera turns organ debt into a full rock opera, and The Giver's "releases" hide a version of the same math behind gentler language.
Near-future America where a law decides who's disposable
Unwind imagines a country that legislated its way around one moral problem by creating a much bigger one, and the rest of YA dystopia is full of the same trick. The Hunger Games sacrifices children to keep the districts in line, Divergent's factionless get written off as failures by design, Matched schedules your whole life including its end, and Delirium classifies love itself as a disease worth curing.
Teens on the run from a system that wants to erase them
Connor, Risa, and Lev spend the whole book racing a clock they can't stop, which is the same pressure driving The Maze Runner's escape from the Glade, The 5th Wave's Cassie moving alone through hostile territory, Chaos Walking's Todd fleeing a settlement that wants him silenced, and Legend's Day staying one step ahead of a Republic that already sentenced him.