Thirty-four years after her best-selling dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Canadian writer Margaret Atwood recently premiered a sequel, “The Testaments.”
In the past decades, Atwood refused to write a sequel, despite calls from fans. But she said the recent deterioration in women's rights prompted and inspired her to write a new story.
“A couple of things happened. Instead of going away from Gilead as I thought had been happening in the 1990s, we started going back towards Gilead in a number of places in the world including the United States,” the author said.
Recent moves to curtail access to abortion in the United States have caused huge division and galvanized women’s rights activists.
A still of Margaret Atwood's Twitter account.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who was elected in 2016, has said he opposes abortions in most cases and he has joined many of his fellow Republicans in seeking to limit them.
Many doctors and rights groups are fighting these efforts as harmful to women’s health and in breach of a constitutional right to abortion.
Atwood said she was already conceptualizing a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale” when Trump was elected. At the time, the television series based on her novel was being filmed.
Women dressed as handmaids from the novel, film and television series "The Handmaid's Tale" demonstrate against cuts for Planned Parenthood in the Republican U.S. Senate healthcare bill at the Capitol in Washington, U.S., June 27, 2017. /VCG Photo
The hit novel was adopted into a TV series starring Elisabeth Moss by Hulu, which won eight Primetime Emmy Awards in 2017. It made the handmaid’s uniform of a long dark red cloak and large white bonnet a symbol of female protest and resistance.
Fans gathered in London at midnight on Tuesday to hear Atwood read from her new book, hailing it as a timely and necessary response to an increasingly menacing world for women.
“The world in some ways is becoming a worse place for women and particularly in the United States and so this is very current, and very relevant and very necessary,” said Anne Enith-Cooper, 57, who attended the launch.
Cast and crew of "The Handmaid's Tale" accept the Outstanding Drama Series award onstage during the 69th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 17, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. /VCG Photo
The narrator in the new book is no longer Offred, but three women including the character “Aunt Lydia” starring Ann Dowd in Hulu’s show. According to Variety, Hulu has been discussing to adapt the new book into a television show, and seeks to integrate it into the current TV series.
“The Testaments” has already landed Atwood a nomination for one of the publishing world’s top accolades, the Booker Prize.
(With inputs from Reuters)