New Releases by Margaret Atwood

This is the wise, unsettling, drastic story of three women whose lives share a common wound: Zenia, a woman they first met as university students in the sixties. Zenia is smart and beautiful, by turns manipulative, vulnerable – and irresistible. She has entered into their separate lives to ensnare their sympathy, betray their trust, and exploit their weaknesses. Now Zenia, thought dead, has suddenly reappeared. In this richly layered narrative, Atwood skilfully evokes the decades of the past as she retraces three women’s lives, until we are back in the present – where it’s yet to be discovered whether Zenia’s “pure, free-wheeling malevolence” can still wreak havoc. The Robber Bride reports from the farthest reaches of the sex wars and is one of Margaret Atwood’s most intricate and subversive novels yet.

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.

A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize. Margaret Atwood’s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again. The narrator of Atwood''s riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake''s high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief. With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter.

A l’occasion d’une rétrospective de son travail dans une galerie, Elaine Risley, une artiste-peintre controversée, retourne à Toronto sur les lieux de son enfance. Hier puritaine et grise, aujourd’hui éclatante de la lumière des néons, la ville provoque chez Elaine un choc qui fait rejaillir les souvenirs de son enfance. Pendant la semaine qu’elle y passe, l’attention d’Elaine, et celle du roman, se concentre sur le passé et sur l’introspection. Et aux milieu des images diverses qui remontent à la surface de sa mémoire, revient celle qui a peut-être le plus pesé sur son destin : l’image de Cordelia, son amie d’enfance, sa tourmenteuse, son double. Entre passé et présent, la vie de la narratrice se dévoile et l’on suit les premières années de son arrivée à Toronto. Là, Elaine rencontre Carole, Grace et Cordelia. Ensemble, les petites filles mettent en place un monde à elles, loin des préoccupations des adultes et où se jouent des tragédies silencieuses, des drames étouffés. Puis les années passent et Elaine continue son chemin, mais garde en elle le souvenir de cette période étrange, où s’enracine sa mémoire et ses oublis, et qui est le terreau dans lequel s’inscrit son art. Avec ce magnifique roman de formation, Margaret Atwood fait tourner devant nous son oeil de chat, cette bille fétiche, où se trouve reflétée la vie de toutes les femmes, de toutes les petites filles qu’elles ont été.

In these ten dazzling 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.

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.

Payback is an intelligent, wide-ranging book that examines the metaphor of debt and the role it takes in our lives. Debt is like air - something we take for granted and never think about until things go wrong. This is not a book about debt management or high finance, but about debt as a very old, central motif in religion and literature and also in the structuring of human societies. She looks at the language of debt in the Old Testament - what was ''owed'' to God, and why. She then turns to investigate debt as sin in medieval and Elizabethan literature, before it develops into a plot-driving concept in nineteenth and twentieth century novels. The debts to society and to nature are discussed in the final essay in this book as Atwood explores how debt as a metaphor affects our understanding of the environment and death. Topical, enlightening and probing, this is the work of one of the most gifted writers of our generation.

In Homer''s account, Penelope''s story is the salutary tale of the constant wife. It is she who rules Odysseus''s kingdom of Ithaca during his twenty-year absence at the Trojan War; she who raises their wayward son and fends off over a hundred insistent suitors. When Odysseus finally returns – having vanquished monsters, slept with goddesses and endured many other well-documented hardships – he kills the suitors and also, curiously twelve of Penelope''s maids. In a splendid contemporary twist, Margaret Atwood tells the story through Penelope and her twelve hanged maids, asking: ''What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?'' It''s a dazzling, playful retelling, as wise and compassionate as it is haunting; as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing.

The companion volume to the recently reissued Second Words, Moving Targets is an essential collection of critical prose by Margaret Atwood, now available in a handsome new A List edition. The most precious treasure of this collection is that it gives us the rich back-story and diverse range of influences on Margaret Atwood’s work. From the aunts who encouraged her nascent writing career to the influence of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four on The Handmaid’s Tale, we trace the movement of Atwood’s fertile and curious mind in action over the years. Atwood’s controversial political pieces, “Napoleon’s Two Biggest Mistakes” and “Letter to America” — both not-so-veiled warnings about the repercussions of the war in Iraq — also appear, alongside pieces that exhibit her active concern for the environment, the North, and the future of the human race. Atwood also writes about her peers: John Updike, Marina Warner, Italo Calvino, Marian Engel, Toni Morrison, Angela Carter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mordecai Richler, Elmore Leonard, and Ursula Le Guin. This is a landmark volume from a major writer whose worldwide readership is in the millions, and whose work has influenced and entertained generations. Moving Targets is also the companion volume to the recently reissued Second Words.

Snowman er kanskje den eneste overlevende etter en ukjent dommedag. En gang var han et medlem av den vitenskapelige eliten, nå er han isolert og ensom og går gjennom fortiden i tankene; den gang moren forsvant og da barndomsvennene Oryx og Crake plutselig dukket opp. Margaret Atwood har skrevet en rekke romaner. Flere av dem er oversatt til norsk.

In Rude Ramsey and the Roaring Radishes, bestselling author Margaret Atwood offers a delightfully ridiculous tale that explores the virtues of resisting restrictions. Rude Ramsey has reached the end of his rope! Sick of dining on rock-hard rice, rubbery ribs, wrinkled ravioli and raw rhinoceros, Ramsey and Ralph (the red-nosed rat) resolve to leave their rectangular residence on a quest for a more refreshing repast. Along the way, they encounter the raven-haired Rillah, a romantic rectory, and a patch of roaring radishes. Together, Ramsey, Ralph, and Rillah manage to reveal that, sometimes, the grass truly is greener on the other side of the rampart. With Atwoodâs rollicking text, accompanied by Dusan Petricicâs hilarious and insightful illustrations, Rude Ramsey and the Roaring Radishes is a rare and rewarding treat for readers of all ages.

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.

Contemporary writers explore themes such as identity, family, sexuality, rebellion, underwear and sexual politics.

First published in 1983, Murder in the Dark is Margaret Atwood''s seventh work of fiction or her tenth book of poetry, depending on how you slice it. These short prose forms range from fictionalized autobiography through prose-poetry, mini-romance, and mini–science fiction. A feast of comic entertainment, Murder in the Dark is Atwood at her wittiest, most thoughtful, and most provoking.

Margaret Atwood''s The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), regarded by many as her most fully realized volume of poetry, is one of the great Canadian and feminist epics. In 1980, Margaret Atwood''s longtime friend, the distinguished Canadian artist Charles Pachter, illustrated, designed, and published a handmade boxed portfolio edition of 120 copies of the poem with silkscreen prints, created as an act of homage to the poet. Atwood herself has said of Pachter''s work, His is a sophisticated art which draws upon many techniques and evokes many echoes. The poem and the prints inspire one another. This is the first facsimile edition of the original, as well as the first one-volume American edition of the poem, with an introduction by Charles Pachter and a foreword by David Staines.

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

Presenting Princess Prunella. Proud, prissy, and pretty, and unhappily very spoiled, she lives in a pink palace with her pinheaded parents, her three plump pussycats, and her prize puppy dog, Pug. Her passion? Her very own person. Her aspiration? To marry a pinheaded prince with piles of pin money, who will praise and pamper her. From Margaret Atwood--the novelist, poet, short story writer and author of such contemporary bestsellers as" The Handmaid''s Tale" and "The Robber Bride"--comes a modern fairy tale with a classic message. Illustrated with elegant humor by Maryann Kovalski, "Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut "revels in the smart-alecky humor of its impertinent heroine and an alliteration of p''s that gives the story a tongue-twisting energy with surprises at every turn. Children, and adults who love reading to children, will love reading princess prunella in the same way that they love reading Dr. Suess for the sheer fun of the language. But there''s something more, too, as a born storyteller creates, with the mere choice of a word, an indelibly lively portrait of a spoiled little girl who is about to get her much-deserved comeuppance. Selection of Book-of-the-Month Club. 53,000 copies in print.

Une peintre au début de la cinquantaine, revient à Toronto, sa ville natale, et découvre de surprenants changements. Ce retour l''amène à revivre, en pensée, différents épisodes de son existence (en particulier, une période de son enfance au cours de laquelle elle était terrorisée et brimée par une autre enfant), à méditer sur la mort et le temps enfui. Comme le signale Jean Royer, des voix féministes ont critiqué ce roman psychologique et sociologique qui s''attache pour une part assez importante à démonter les mécanismes "d''apprentissage du pouvoir chez les filles" de sept à douze ans.

The theme in this collection of stories concerns diverse relationships, such as the bond between a political activist and his cat, and the situation of a man who finds himself surrounded by women who are shrinking.

Poems stress the need to recognize the crimes of repressive regimes, the redeeming power of friendship, the unreliability of perception, and the mystery of nature

Celebrated as a major novelist throughout the English-speaking world, Atwood has also written eleven volumes of poetry. Houghton Mifflin is proud to have published SELECTED POEMS, 1965-1975, a volume of selections from Atwood''s poetry of that decade.

Two children rejoice in their home up in a tree, free from parental guidance and earthbound concerns. But when beavers gnaw their ladder into matchsticks, the children aren''t sure they want to be "quite so alone. Playful, whimsical, and wry, the story is vintage Atwood. Long out of print, "Up in the Tree was first published in 1978. Because it was considered too expensive and risky to publish a children''s book in Canada, Atwood not only wrote and illustrated the book, but hand-lettered the type. This facsimile edition captures all the charm of the original, and makes a thoughtful gift for Atwood fans as well as for young readers.