Margaret Atwood is one of the most important and influential writers alive. Her 50 plus books — including poetry, short stories, scripts, children’s fiction, non-fiction, and 15 novels — have been translated into more than 40 languages. A Canadian literary celebrity, Atwood has won over 50 awards, including the 2000 Booker Prize, and holds numerous Honorary Fellowships. Her most famous novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), is a cultural phenomenon.
The Handmaid’s Tale is commonly described as a feminist work, but Atwood is not exclusively interested in the politics of gender. She is keenly aware of her cultural surroundings and constantly engages with multiple facets of contemporary theory and philosophy. Her work has also been critiqued in the light of environmentalism, Canadian nationalism and postmodernism. Atwood is ironic and self-aware, playing with ideas through a humorous and detached authorial voice.
Timeless questions about God
Her most complex and interesting books, The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake (2003) and The Year of the Flood (2009) participate in a genre of ‘what-if’ stories, imagining the day after tomorrow and speculating on the shape of things to come. In fact, Atwood herself refers to them as ‘speculative fiction’. These narratives unfold the future to confront the timeless questions at the core of human experience. How was the world created? Where did humans come from? Is there a God and how can we please him? How should men and women relate to each other?
