New Releases by Margaret Atwood

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Interviews with Atwood by other writers, including Graeme Gibson, Joyce Carol Oates, Geoff Hancock.

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