Best Selling Books by Margaret ATWOOD

An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning.

Part detective novel, part psychological thriller, Surfacing is the story of a young woman who returns to northern Quebec, to the remote island of her childhood, with her lover and two friends, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her father. Flooded with memories, she begins to realize that going home means entering not only another place, but another time. As the wild island exerts its elemental hold and she is submerged in the language of the wilderness, she discovers that what she is really searching for is her own past. Permeated with an aura of suspense, complex with layered meanings, and written in brilliant, diamond-sharp prose, Surfacing has grown in reputation as a novel unique in modern literature for its mythic exploration of one woman’s spiritual pilgrimage.

In honor of the thirtieth anniversary of The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood describes how she came to write her utopian, dystopian works. The word “utopia” comes from Thomas More’s book of the same name—meaning “no place” or “good place,” or both. In “Dire Cartographies,” from the essay collection In Other Worlds, Atwood coins the term “ustopia,” which combines utopia and dystopia, the imagined perfect society and its opposite. Each contains latent versions of the other. Following her intellectual journey and growing familiarity with ustopias fictional and real, from Atlantis to Avatar and Beowulf to Berlin in 1984 (and 1984), Atwood explains how years after abandoning a PhD thesis with chapters on good and bad societies, she produced novel-length dystopias and ustopias of her own. “My rules for The Handmaid’s Tale were simple,” Atwood writes. “I would not put into this book anything that humankind had not already done, somewhere, sometime, or for which it did not already have the tools.” With great wit and erudition, Atwood reveals the history behind her beloved creations.

In this astonishing tour de force, Margaret Atwood takes the reader back in time and into the life and mind of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century. In 1843, at the age of sixteen, servant girl Grace Marks was convicted for her part in the vicious murders of her employer and his mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Grace herself claims to have no memory of the murders. As Dr. Simon Jordan – an expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness – tries to unlock her memory, what will he find? Was Grace a femme fatale – or a weak and unwilling victim of circumstances? Taut and compelling, penetrating and wise, Alias Grace is a beautifully crafted work of the imagination that vividly evokes time and place. The novel and its characters will continue to haunt the reader long after the final page.

Atwood triumphs with these dazzling, personal stories in her first collection since Wilderness Tips. In these ten interrelated stories Atwood traces the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it, while evoking the drama and the humour that colour common experiences — the birth of a baby, divorce and remarriage, old age and death. With settings ranging from Toronto, northern Quebec, and rural Ontario, the stories begin in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. Then the narrative goes back in time to the forties and moves chronologically forward toward the present. In “The Art of Cooking and Serving,” the twelve-year-old narrator does her best to accommodate the arrival of a baby sister. After she boldly declares her independence, we follow the narrator into young adulthood and then through a complex relationship. In “The Entities,” the story of two women haunted by the past unfolds. The magnificent last two stories reveal the heartbreaking old age of parents but circle back again to childhood, to complete the cycle. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood’s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage. This is vintage Atwood, writing at the height of her powers.

A collection of intimate reflections on such diverse subjects as classical history, popular mythology, love, and the fragility of nature.

The bestselling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments "uses her powerful gifts of language and observation to delineate both the misunderstandings between men and women and the everyday sadnesses and comforts of love” (The New York Times). In each of these stories Atwood deftly illuminates the shape of a whole life: in a few brief pages we watch as characters progress from the vulnerabilities of adolescence through the passions of youth into the precarious complexities of middle age. The past resurfaces in the present in ways both subtle and dramatic: the body of a lost Arctic explorer emerges from the ice, a 2,000-year-old bog man turns up in an archeological dig, a man with dark secrets marries his lover’s sister, a girl who disappears on a canoe trip haunts her friend many decades later. The richly layered stories in Wilderness Tips map interior landscapes shaped by time, regret, and lost chances, endowing even the most unassuming of lives with a disquieting intensity.

Marian has a problem. A willing member of the consumer society in which she lives, she suddenly finds herself identifying with the things being consumed. She can cope with her tidy-minded fiancé, Peter, who likes shooting rabbits. She can cope with her job in market research, and the antics of her roommate. She can even cope with Duncan, a graduate student who seems to prefer laundromats to women. But not being able to eat is a different matter. Steak was the first to go. Then lamb, pork, and the rest. Next came her incapacity to face an egg. Vegetables were the final straw. But Marian has her reasons, and what happens next provides an unusual solution. Witty, subversive, hilarious, The Edible Woman is dazzling and utterly original. It is Margaret Atwood’s brilliant first novel, and the book that introduced her as a consummate observer of the ironies and absurdities of modern life.

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments—one of Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the center of this intricate novel like a spider in a web. The glamorous, irresistible, unscrupulous Zenia is nothing less than a fairy-tale villain in the memories of her former friends. Roz, Charis, and Tony—university classmates decades ago—were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and have met monthly for lunch ever since, obsessively retracing the destructive swath she once cut through their lives. A brilliantly inventive fabulist, Zenia had a talent for exploiting her friends’ weaknesses, wielding intimacy as a weapon and cheating them of money, time, sympathy, and men. But one day, five years after her funeral, they are shocked to catch sight of Zenia: even her death appears to have been yet another fiction. As the three women plot to confront their larger-than-life nemesis, Atwood proves herself a gleefully acute observer of the treacherous shoals of friendship, trust, desire, and power.

A groundbreaking meditation on sexual politics, love, and human tenacity from the world-renowned pioneer of feminist writing and prophetic author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood. When it first appeared in 1971, Margaret Atwood’s Power Politics startled readers with its vital dance of woman and man. It still startles today, and is just as iconoclastic as ever. These poems occupy all at once the intimate, the political, and the mythic. Here Atwood makes us realize that we may think our own personal dichotomies are unique, but really they are multiple, universal. Clear, direct, wry, and unrelenting — Atwood’s poetic powers are honed to perfection in this seminal work from her early career.

Alongside meditations on warlords, cat heaven, and orphans, the bestselling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments offers a sly pep talk to the ambitious young, laments the proliferation of photos of oneself, imagines an apocalypse of worms, and recalls Helen of Troy’s childhood Kool-Aid stand. In the title fable, a writer huddled inside a tent of paper engages in doodling as self-defense, scribbling on the walls in a frantic attempt to keep out encroaching horrors. Adorned with her own playful illustrations, The Tent is a delightful mélange of short fiction that pushes the boundaries of form in intriguing directions, replete with Atwood’s droll humor, keen insight, and lyric brilliance.

Cat’s Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. By turns disquieting, humorous, compassionate, haunting and mordant, Cat’s Eye is vintage Atwood.

When a Fundamentalist religious group gains power and implements a Fascist government, a social class of handmaids is created. Stripped of her former identity, Offred tells her tale of being reduced to her reproductive capabilities.

A powerful and brilliantly crafted novel, Bodily Harm is the story of Rennie Wilford, a young journalist whose life has begun to shatter around the edges. Rennie flies to the Caribbean to recuperate, and on the tiny island of St. Antoine, she is confronted by a world where her rules for survival no longer apply. By turns comic, satiric, relentless, and terrifying, Margaret Atwood''s Bodily Harm is ultimately an exploration of the lust for power, both sexual and political, and the need for compassion that goes beyond what we ordinarily mean by love".The acerbic wit that is an Atwood trademark...political insights...comedy and pathos, and in the end, tragedy". -- Chicago Sun-TimesHumor and satire, thoughtfulness, and lots of action make this a jam-packed novel". -- The Washington Post"Romance and adventure by a female Graham Greene at his peak". -- Marilyn French, author of The Women''s Room"This is a story about one of today''s women...Bodily Harm is strong stuff, and the writing is nearly flawless". -- People

The bestselling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments weaves together strands of gothic suspense, romance, and science fiction into one utterly spellbinding narrative, beginning with the mysterious death of a young woman named Laura Chase in 1945. Decades later, Laura’s sister Iris recounts her memories of their childhood, and of the dramatic deaths that have punctuated their wealthy, eccentric family’s history. Intertwined with Iris’s account are chapters from the scandalous novel that made Laura famous, in which two illicit lovers amuse each other by spinning a tale of a blind killer on a distant planet. These richly layered stories-within-stories gradually illuminate the secrets that have long haunted the Chase family, coming together in a brilliant and astonishing final twist.

As a part of the launch of the new A List series, a curated selection of titles from Anansi''s backlist featuring handsome new covers and introductions by well-known writers, comes Margaret Atwood''s Governor General''s Literary Award–winning The Circle Game, with an introduction by Suzanne Buffam. The appearance of Margaret Atwood''s first major collection of poetry marked the beginning of a truly outstanding career in Canadian and international letters. The voice in these poems is as witty, vulnerable, direct, and incisive as we''ve come to know in later works, such as Power Politics, Bodily Harm, and Alias Grace. Atwood writes compassionately about the risks of love in a technological age, and the quest for identity in a universe that cannot quite be trusted. Containing many of Atwood''s best and most famous poems, The Circle Game won the 1966 Governor General''s Literary Award for Poetry and rapidly attained an international reputation as a classic of modern poetry.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments—the second book of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy, set in the visionary world of Oryx and Crake, is at once a moving tale of lasting friendship and a landmark work of speculative fiction. The long-feared waterless flood has occurred, altering Earth as we know it and obliterating most human life. Among the survivors are Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Amid shadowy, corrupt ruling powers and new, gene-spliced life forms, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can''t stay locked away.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments, a dazzling collection of short stories that look deeply into the heart of family relationships, marriage, loss and memory, and what it means to spend a life together "If you consider yourself an Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You’ve been missing out.” —The New York Times Book Review, Rebecca Makkai, best-selling author of The Great Believers Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine—explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood’s characteristic insight, wit and intellect. The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love—and what comes after. Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.

A marvelous collection of wide-ranging essays from the bestselling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments, exploring her lifelong relationship to science fiction—as a reader and as a writer The ebook edition of this title contains over thirty additional, illuminating ebook-exclusive illustrations by the author At a time when the borders between genres are increasingly porous, she maps the fertile crosscurrents of speculative and science fiction, utopias, dystopias, slipstream, and fantasy, musing on the age-old human impulse to imagine new worlds. She shares the evolution of her personal fascination with SF, from her childhood invention of a race of flying superhero rabbits to her graduate study of its Victorian antecedents to the creation of her own acclaimed novels. Studded with appreciations of such influential writers as Marge Piercy, Ursula K. LeGuin, Kazuo Ishiguro, H. Rider Haggard, Aldous Huxley, H. G. Wells, and Jonathan Swift, In Other Worlds is as humorous and charming as it is insightful and provocative.

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments—in the gated community of Consilience, residents who sign a contract will get a job and a lovely house for six months of the year...if they serve as inmates in the Positron prison system for the alternate months. “Captivating...thrilling.” —The New York Times Book Review Stan and Charmaine, a young urban couple, have been hit by job loss and bankruptcy in the midst of nationwide economic collapse. Forced to live in their third-hand Honda, where they are vulnerable to roving gangs, they think the gated community of Consilience may be the answer to their prayers. At first, this seems worth it: they will have a roof over their heads and food on the table. But when a series of troubling events unfolds, Positron begins to look less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled. The Heart Goes Last is a vivid, urgent vision of development and decay, freedom and surveillance, struggle and hope—and the timeless workings of the human heart.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The first volume in the internationally acclaimed MaddAddam trilogy is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future—from the bestselling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey—with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake—through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

By turns humorous and warm, stark and frightening, Bluebeard''s Egg infuses a Canada of the 1940s, ''50s and ''80s with glowing childhood memories, the harsh realities of parents growing old, and the casual cruelty that men and women inflict on each other. Here is the familiar outer world of family summers at remote lakes, winters of political activism, and seasons of exotic friends, mudane lives and unexpected loves. But here too is the inner world of hidden places and all that emerges from them—the intimately personal, the fantastic and the shockingly real...whether it''s what lies in a mysterious locked room or in the secret feelings we all conceal.

An original and compelling work in which Margaret Atwood passes one woman’s bizarre life through the prism of her unique literary vision. The shy, awkward wife of a perpetual radical, Joan Foster is a formerly obese woman whose delicate equilibrium is threatened by the fact that the several lives she has lived separately and secretly are coming together and will be exposed. She is newly and notoriously famous as a bestselling author; she writes gothic novels under a nom de plume; she is having a hidden affair. Love, fear, understanding, suspense, sensuality, and humour—there is hardly an emotional current that is not touched in Lady Oracle, and with a depth, vitality, and wit that are rare in any time.

The first collection of nonfiction work by the author in more than two decades features fifty-seven essays and reviews on a wide range of topics, including John Updike, Toni Morrison, grunge, September 11th, and Gabriel Garca Mrquez, among others. Reprint.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE • A modern masterpiece that "reminds us of the power of truth in the face of evil” (People)—and can be read on its own or as a sequel to Margaret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale. “Atwood’s powers are on full display” (Los Angeles Times) in this deeply compelling Booker Prize-winning novel, now updated with additional content that explores the historical sources, ideas, and material that inspired Atwood. More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid''s Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia. Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways. With The Testaments, Margaret Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.

A look at the Odyssey from Penelope''s point of view.

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments • This brilliant collection of connected short stories strings together several decades of moments in the life of one woman—as an ambitious girl in the 1930s, as a young professional coming of age in the uncertain ‘50s and ‘60s, and as half of a couple growing old together. In a series of vividly evoked settings that span cities, backwoods, and farm country, we see this woman contending over time with an unstable sister, a married lover, aging parents, mystifying stepchildren, vulnerable farm animals, and her own changing self. By turns funny, lyrical, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Margaret Atwood’s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage.