Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, born in 1939, published poetry before fiction: The Circle Game won the Governor General's Award in 1966, and her first novel, The Edible Woman, followed in 1969. Surfacing and her critical study Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, both from 1972, helped establish her as an important voice in Canadian literature. Since 1961 she has published 18 books of poetry and 18 novels, along with nonfiction, short fiction and children's books. She co-founded the Griffin Poetry Prize and invented the LongPen remote-signing device.

The Handmaid's Tale (1985) is set in near-future New England under Gilead, a theocratic state that has overthrown the US government, and follows Offred, a woman forced to bear children for a high-status man. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 1985 Governor General's Award. Cat's Eye (1988) and Alias Grace (1996), a historical novel about the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery, both reached the Booker shortlist. She won the Booker for The Blind Assassin in 2000 and shared it in 2019 for The Testaments. The MaddAddam trilogy (2003–2013) deals with genetic modification and corporate control, and Hag-Seed (2016) retells Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Start with The Handmaid's Tale. It is the book most people know her by, and it is the groundwork for The Testaments, which only makes full sense afterward. Read The Testaments next if you want Gilead continued: set 15 years later, it is narrated by Aunt Lydia from the first book and by two young women, one raised in Gilead and one in Canada.

For a different side of Atwood, go to Alias Grace, a historical novel built on a real 1843 double murder, or to Oryx and Crake, which opens the MaddAddam trilogy. The Blind Assassin, which won both the Booker and the Hammett Prize in 2000, makes a good fourth book.