When she revealed her intention to write a followup, they were nervous. and the U.K. - although copies of the book were mistakenly shipped to some customers a week early.ĭuration 5:30 Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is hailed as a literary breakthrough.Įven with the success of the 1985 original that elevated Atwood to the bestseller list, she said publishers never put any pressure on her to write the sequel. The Testaments hits shelves Tuesday in Canada, the U.S. You cannot count on the yellow brick road leading to the City of Oz.' 'People who think that progress is a one-way street and only ever goes in one direction have not read a lot of history. EXPLORE: As Margaret Atwood enters her 80th year, explore her life and career.INTERVIEW: Margaret Atwood talks to CBC's Shelagh Rogers about The Testaments.election and the ongoing state of political discourse. That signalled that politics would 'become a lot more conservative, which societies always do when they're attacked,' Atwood said, with all of that leading to the 2016 U.S. 'Instead of going away from Gilead, we turned around and started coming back towards Gilead.'Ītwood reflected on the years between the novels, referencing the fall of the Berlin Wall, which people thought was the 'end of history,' and decades of feminist struggle that seemingly suggested women's rights were achieved and irreversible. 1: history changed,' Atwood told The Current's interim host Laura Lynch. 'I was no, no, no, no, no for awhile, but then No. Canadian author Margaret Atwood says the world's dynamic and uncertain political climate was the push she needed to write The Testaments - the long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid's Tale many fans had been seeking for more than 30 years.

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