Margaret Atwood - The Testaments

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cats Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace , The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaids Tale, went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when he Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women, and with the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series.

Atwood has won numerous awards including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

NOVELS

The Edible Woman

Surfacing

Lady Oracle

Life Before Man

Bodily Harm

The Handmaids Tale

Cats Eye

The Robber Bride

Alias Grace

The Blind Assassin

Oryx and Crake

The Penelopiad

The Year of the Flood

MaddAddam

The Heart Goes Last

Hag-Seed

SHORTER FICTION

Dancing Girls

Murder in the Dark

Bluebeards Egg

Wilderness Tips

Good Bones and Simple Murders

The Tent

Moral Disorder

Stone Mattress

POETRY

Double Persephone

The Circle Game

The Animals in That Country

The Journals of Susanna Moodie

Procedures for Underground

Power Politics

You Are Happy

Selected Poems: 19651975

Two-Headed Poems

True Stories

Interlunar

Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New, 19761986

Morning in the Burned House

Eating Fire: Selected Poetry, 19651995

The Door

NON FICTION

Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature

Days of the Rebels 18151840

Second Words

Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature

Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

Moving Targets: Writing with Intent 19822004

Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing

Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 19832005

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

FOR CHILDREN

Up in the Tree

Annas Pet (with Joyce Barkhouse)

For the Birds

Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut

Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes

Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda

Wandering Wenda

GRAPHIC NOVELS

Angel Catbird

The Handmaids Tale

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

GEORGE ELIOT, DANIEL DERONDA

When we look one another in the face, were neither of us just looking at a face we hateno, were gazing into a mirror . Do you really not recognize yourselves in us ?

OBERSTURMBANNFHRER LISS TO OLD BOLSHEVIK MOSTOVSKY, VASILY GROSSMAN, LIFE AND FATE

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake . It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.

URSULA K. LE GUIN, THE TOMBS OF ATUAN

Only dead people are allowed to have statues, but I have been given one while still alive. Already I am petrified.

This statue was a small token of appreciation for my many contributions, said the citation, which was read out by Aunt Vidala. Shed been assigned the task by our superiors, and was far from appreciative. I thanked her with as much modesty as I could summon, then pulled the rope that released the cloth drape shrouding me; it billowed to the ground, and there I stood. We dont do cheering here at Ardua Hall, but there was some discreet clapping. I inclined my head in a nod.

My statue is larger than life, as statues tend to be, and shows me as younger, slimmer, and in better shape than Ive been for some time. I am standing straight, shoulders back, my lips curved into a firm but benevolent smile. My eyes are fixed on some cosmic point of reference understood to represent my idealism, my unflinching commitment to duty, my determination to move forward despite all obstacles. Not that anything in the sky would be visible to my statue, placed as it is in a morose cluster of trees and shrubs beside the footpath running in front of Ardua Hall. We Aunts must not be too presumptuous, even in stone.

Clutching my left hand is a girl of seven or eight, gazing up at me with trusting eyes. My right hand rests on the head of a woman crouched at my side, her hair veiled, her eyes upturned in an expression that could be read as either craven or gratefulone of our Handmaidsand behind me is one of my Pearl Girls, ready to set out on her missionary work. Hanging from a belt around my waist is my Taser. This weapon reminds me of my failings: had I been more effective, I would not have needed such an implement. The persuasion in my voice would have been enough.

As a group of statuary its not a great success: too crowded. I would have preferred more emphasis on myself. But at least I look sane. It could well have been otherwise, as the elderly sculptressa true believer since deceasedhad a tendency to confer bulging eyes on her subjects as a sign of their pious fervour. Her bust of Aunt Helena looks rabid, that of Aunt Vidala is hyperthyroid, and that of Aunt Elizabeth appears ready to explode.

At the unveiling the sculptress was nervous. Was her rendition of me sufficiently flattering? Did I approve of it? Would I be seen to approve? I toyed with the idea of frowning as the sheet came off, but thought better of it: I am not without compassion. Very lifelike, I said.

That was nine years ago. Since then my statue has weathered: pigeons have decorated me, moss has sprouted in my damper crevices. Votaries have taken to leaving offerings at my feet: eggs for fertility, oranges to suggest the fullness of pregnancy, croissants to reference the moon. I ignore the breadstuffsusually they have been rained onbut pocket the oranges. Oranges are so refreshing.

I write these words in my private sanctum within the library of Ardua Hallone of the few libraries remaining after the enthusiastic book-burnings that have been going on across our land. The corrupt and blood-smeared fingerprints of the past must be wiped away to create a clean space for the morally pure generation that is surely about to arrive. Such is the theory.