The bestselling author of The Testaments talks about her unusual upbringing and why it was time to revisit the dystopia of The Handmaidīs Tale`You are in chaos,` Margaret Atwood decrees calmly over tea. `Itīs Cavaliers versus Roundheads.` We meet in London, the afternoon before she is due at Waterstones in Piccadilly to sell the first copy of The Testaments, the long awaited sequel to The Handmaidīs Tale, at midnight, accompanied by women in the now globally recognised handmaidsī costumes. Further up the river, Westminster is shutting down for five weeks. Ever since Boris Johnson raised the prospect of proroguing parliament, people have been sharing a quote from The Handmaidīs Tale, published 35 years ago, just as they did in the US following the election of Donald Trump in 2016: `That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasnīt even any rioting in the streets. People stayed at home at night, watching television.``It is another predictable mess that people have got drawn into because a big honking pack of lies was told about it,` Atwood says of Brexit. Apart from the legal questions - `actions have consequences, but what will the consequences be?` - she is most interested in `who is going to benefit from this financially? Who is shorting the pound? I can think of all kinds of people who might turn it to their advantage.` Continue reading...
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