The Testaments

"An incredible follow-up"
show more

It is an addictively readable, fastpaced adventure... the rhyme of reality with fiction is loud and devastatingly clear... In The Testaments, Atwood changes the emphasis of the plot, to strike a note of optimism - a hopeful reminder that resistance is possible and such regimes do eventually always fall -- Holly Williams * Independent * Fluent, imaginative and provocative -- Stuart Kelly * Scotland on Sunday * Atwood is our high sorceress, a very grownup one, with a truly unnerving knack for auspicious timing... Like Kafka and Orwell, Atwood has become part of the public discourse -- Lisa Allardice * Guardian * Atwood's prose is as powerful as ever, tense and spare... I finished in six hours flat -- Laura Freeman * BBC.com * The literary release of the year... The Testaments is ultimately a hopeful novel, filled with female resistance against oppression -- Polly Dunbar * Grazia * With surgical clarity, Atwood documents how the stripping of fundamental freedoms, the weight of systemic oppression, pushes individuals to extremes... The pacing is flawless. The prose is lean, mean, and charged -- David Canfield * Entertainment Weekly * While unflinching in depicting horror and showing how complicity enables the collapse of compassion, The Testaments is also a clarion call to hope, resistance and activism... a formidable achievement that will doubtless be read in decades to come -- Anita Sethi * i news * The Testaments is that elusive dream of a book -- an erudite, accessible, highly readable adventure, that brims with ideas but never lets them get in the way of the story -- Cathy Rentzenbrink * Prospect * A plump, pacy, witty and tightly plotted page-turner that transports us straight back to the dark heart of Gilead... Atwood is on top form -- Julie Myerson * Observer * Believe the reviews, it is remarkable -- Lindsay Woods * Irish Examiner * The must-read novel of the year -- a perfect gift for bookworms and fans of the TV series * Sunday Telegraph * At its heart, this gripping novel is a rallying call for action... In Atwood's world, resistance is never futile -- Mernie Gilmore * Daily Express * A cracker: urgent, moving and as tense as any thriller... there's a darkly rebellious humour, ingenious wordplay and, of course, chillingly timely warnings. Atwood is long overdue a Nobel -- Hepzibah Anderson * Mail on Sunday * No one needs another recommendation for The Testaments and still I have to say how thrilling it is when a book manages to exceed all expectations. How did she manage to make darkness feel so effortless? How did she think to inject humour where no humour should exist? Because she's Margaret Atwood, and she can do anything -- Ann Patchett I gobbled it down... Atwood has an incredible intellectual nimbleness that challenges us constantly and poses the question that lies like a pearl inside the shell of this frighteningly readable novel, "Before you sit in judgement, how would you behave in Gilead?" -- Allison Pearson * Sunday Telegraph * The Testaments is Atwood at her best, in its mixture of generosity, insight and control. The prose is adroit, direct, beautifully turned. 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. To read this book is to feel the world turning -- Anne Enright * Guardian * Finding hope in a hopeless place, this is everything The Handmaid's Tale fans wanted and more. Prepare to hold your breath throughout, and to cry real tears at the end. My book of the year -- Kayleigh Dray * Stylist * Gripping, pacy and beautifully written -- Justine Jordan * Guardian * An incredible follow-up * the Sun, *Pick of the Week* * Thrilling and blistering * Daily Telegraph *
show more

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid's Tale, went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women, and with the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. Its sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019 and was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize.

Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
show more