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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2019, 432 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2020, 448 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Kim Kovacs
Buy This Book
In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades.
When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her—freedom, prison or death.
With The Testaments, the wait is over.
Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.
"Dear Readers: Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in." —Margaret Atwood
The publisher was unable to provide an excerpt of The Testaments to BookBrowse, but there is an extensive excerpt at The Guardian (link opens in new page).
Booker Prize
2019
The Testaments is without a doubt a five-star book; it’s well-written, it’s entertaining, and it moves extremely well. It’s inevitable, though, that it will be compared to The Handmaid’s Tale, and frankly it falls short of the bar. The novel feels somewhat predictable and, ultimately, less impactful, but it's still entertaining and very much worth a read...continued
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(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939. Although best known for her speculative fiction, she's the author of more than 40 books, including works of fiction, poetry, short stories, children's works and critical essays.
Atwood's desire to be a writer stems from a revelation she had at the age of 16. As she was walking across her high school's football field, she composed a poem in her head. At that point, as she has stated in a recent interview with the Guardian, she decided she was a writer. After receiving her B.A. at the University of Toronto and a Masters at Radcliffe, she moved back to Canada to teach English at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, publishing her first book in 1961, a poetry collection entitled...
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