A 2011 World Book Night selection.

Atwood's Booker prize-winning novel reissued with a striking new jacket along with other titles from Margaret Atwood's backlist. Lyrical, outrageous, formidable, compelling and funny, this is a novel filled with deep humour and dark drama.

Our Editorial Guru, Sarah Broadhurst, has suggested others book and authors that would be perfect for you to read next or to pass on the recommendation - so your gift will keep on giving enjoyment. Her selection for this title is:  Aldous Huxley.

Synopsis

Laura Chase's older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and eighty-two, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the First War. While coping with her unreliable body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin, a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following. Sexually explicit for its time, The Blind Assassin describes a risky affair in the turbulent thirties between a wealthy young woman and a man on the run. During their secret meetings in rented rooms, the lovers concoct a pulp fantasy set on Planet Zycron. As the invented story twists through love and sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real one; while events in both move closer to war and catastrophe.

Reviews

** 'Atwood has never written with more flair and versatility than in this multidimensional novel. A brilliant accomplishment
SUNDAY TIMES

** 'This is Margaret Atwood at her remarkable best.
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

** 'Margaret Atwood is one of the most brilliant and unpredictable novelists alive.
LITERARY REVIEW

** 'THE BLIND ASSASSIN may indeed prove to be that most elusive of literary unicorns: the woman's novel.
NEW STATESMAN

About the Author

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.   She is the author of more than twenty-five volumes of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman, The Handmaid's Tale, The Robber Bride and Alias Grace. Her novel, The Blind Assassin,  won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000.   Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson.   Author photo © George Whiteside More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation