The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one option : to breed. If she deviates, she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on whom her future hangs.
The wait is over And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.
When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her - freedom, prison or death.
With The Testaments, the wait is over.
Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story 15 years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.
'Dear Readers: Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in.' Margaret Atwood 'THE LITERARY EVENT OF THE YEAR' Guardian
DISCOVER the BESTSELLING DYSTOPIAN NOVEL behind the AWARD-WINNING TV SERIES Second season now airing on Channel 4 starring Elisabeth Moss The official TV tie-in edition of The Handmaid's Tale, with a new introduction from Margaret Atwood 'I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.' Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford - her assigned name, Offred, means 'of Fred'. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.
Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction.
'As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it...no television event has hit such a nerve ...The Handmaid's Tale is more relevant one year after the first season' - Guardian 'Don't expect to be gripped by a more potent or involving drama this year' - Telegraph
From cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of essays -- funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient -- which seek answers to Burning Questions such as:
Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories?
How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating?
How can we live on our planet?
Is it true? And is it fair?
What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism?
In over fifty pieces Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at our world, and reports back to us on what she finds. The roller-coaster period covered in the collection brought an end to the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump and a pandemic. From debt to tech, the climate crisis to freedom; from when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to how to define granola, we have no better questioner of the many and varied mysteries of our human universe.
INCLUDES NEW ESSAYS FOR PAPERBACK ''Brilliant and funny'' Joan Didion ''She''s taken our times and made us wise to them'' Ali Smith ''Lights a fire from the fears of our age . . . Miraculously balances humor, outrage, and beauty'' New York Times Book Review ''All over the reading world, the history books are being opened to the next blank page and Atwood''s name is written at the top of it'' Anne Enright, Guardian ''The outstanding novelist of our age'' Sunday Times
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017 Selected as a Book of the Year - Observer, Sunday Times, Times, Guardian, New Statesman, i magazine Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he's staging a Tempest like no other. It will boost his reputation. It will heal emotional wounds.
Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. Also brewing revenge.
After twelve years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It's magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?
The wait is over And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.
When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her - freedom, prison or death.
With The Testaments, the wait is over.
Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story 15 years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.
'Dear Readers: Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in.' Margaret Atwood
A dazzling collection of fifteen stories from Margaret Atwood, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments Margaret Atwood is celebrated as one of the most gifted storytellers in the world.
These stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords.
They feature beloved cats, a confused snail, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, philosopher-astronomer-mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, a cabal of elderly female academics, and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales.
At the heart of the collection is a stunning sequence that follows a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love -- and what comes after.
The glorious range of Atwood''s creativity and humanity is on full beam in these tales, which by turns delight, illuminate and quietly devastate.
The collection of a lifetime from the bestselling novelist and poet By turns moving, playful and wise, the poems gathered in Dearly are about absences and endings, ageing and retrospection, but also about gifts and renewals. They explore bodies and minds in transition, as well as the everyday objects and rituals that embed us in the present. Werewolves, sirens and dreams make their appearance, as do various forms of animal life and fragments of our damaged environment.
Before she became one of the world's most important and loved novelists, Atwood was a poet. Dearly is her first collection in over a decade. It brings together many of her most recognisable and celebrated themes, but distilled - from minutely perfect descriptions of the natural world to startlingly witty encounters with aliens, from pressing political issues to myth and legend. It is a pure Atwood delight, and long-term readers and new fans alike will treasure its insight, empathy and humour.
