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  • Published: 4 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9781784744496
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $69.99
Categories:

Book of Lives

A Memoir of Sorts





The life and times of one of the most important writers of our time, from her peripatetic childhood in the Canadian far north, through the writing of The Handmaid's Tale, to her position today as revered truth-teller and literary icon

How does the greatest writer of our time tell her own story? Immerse yourself in the creative universe of Margaret Atwood for a riot of life, art – and everything in between

Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes’

Raised by scientifically minded parents, Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec: a vast playground for her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother. It was an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful.

From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would become Cat’s Eye to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.

As she explores her past, Atwood reveals more and more about her writing, the connections between real life and art – and the workings of one of our very greatest imaginations.

  • Published: 4 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9781784744496
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $69.99
Categories:

About the author

Margaret Atwood

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.

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Praise for Book of Lives

I'd walk across hot coals to speak alongside Mina Smallman... An amazing woman

Jess Phillips, MP

Mina Smallman is all of us, except she's stronger than most of us

Dawn Butler, MP

Mina Smallman is as tough as she is warm

The Guardian

A strong, outspoken and eloquent activist

Daily Mail
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