Testaments

** WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 **

** SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER **

BOOK OF THE YEAR: Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, Stylist, Sunday Times, Financial Times, Guardian, The Times, Observer, Red

Margaret Atwood's dystopian masterpiece, The Handmaid's Tale, is a modern classic. Now she brings the iconic story to a dramatic conclusion in this riveting sequel.

More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results.

Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third voice: a woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets.

As Atwood unfolds The Testaments, she opens up the innermost workings of Gilead as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.

'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

Review: Thrilling and blistering * Daily Telegraph *

An incredible follow-up * the Sun, *Pick of the Week* *

Gripping, pacy and beautifully written -- Justine Jordan * Guardian *

Finding hope in a hopeless place, this is everything The Handmaid's Tale fans wanted and more. Prepare to hold your breath throughout, and to cry real tears at the end. My book of the year -- Kayleigh Dray * Stylist *

The Testaments is Atwood at her best, in its mixture of generosity, insight and control. The prose is adroit, direct, beautifully turned. All over the reading world, the history books are being opened to the next blank page and Atwood's name is written at the top of it. To read this book is to feel the world turning -- Anne Enright * Guardian *

I gobbled it down... Atwood has an incredible intellectual nimbleness that challenges us constantly and poses the question that lies like a pearl inside the shell of this frighteningly readable novel, "Before you sit in judgement, how would you behave in Gilead?" -- Allison Pearson * Sunday Telegraph *

No one needs another recommendation for The Testaments and still I have to say how thrilling it is when a book manages to exceed all expectations. How did she manage to make darkness feel so effortless? How did she think to inject humour where no humour should exist? Because she's Margaret Atwood, and she can do anything -- Ann Patchett

A cracker: urgent, moving and as tense as any thriller... there's a darkly rebellious humour, ingenious wordplay and, of course, chillingly timely warnings. Atwood is long overdue a Nobel -- Hepzibah Anderson * Mail on Sunday *

At its heart, this gripping novel is a rallying call for action... In Atwood's world, resistance is never futile -- Mernie Gilmore * Daily Express *

The must-read novel of the year -- a perfect gift for bookworms and fans of the TV series * Sunday Telegraph *

Believe the reviews, it is remarkable -- Lindsay Woods * Irish Examiner *

A plump, pacy, witty and tightly plotted page-turner that transports us straight back to the dark heart of Gilead... Atwood is on top form -- Julie Myerson * Observer *

The Testaments is that elusive dream of a book -- an erudite, accessible, highly readable adventure, that brims with ideas but never lets them get in the way of the story -- Cathy Rentzenbrink * Prospect *

While unflinching in depicting horror and showing how complicity enables the collapse of compassion, The Testaments is also a clarion call to hope, resistance and activism... a formidable achievement that will doubtless be read in decades to come -- Anita Sethi * i news *

With surgical clarity, Atwood documents how the stripping of fundamental freedoms, the weight of systemic oppression, pushes individuals to extremes... The pacing is flawless. The prose is lean, mean, and charged -- David Canfield * Entertainment Weekly *

The literary release of the year... The Testaments is ultimately a hopeful novel, filled with female resistance against oppression -- Polly Dunbar * Grazia *

Atwood's prose is as powerful as ever, tense and spare... I finished in six hours flat -- Laura Freeman * BBC.com *

Atwood is our high sorceress, a very grownup one, with a truly unnerving knack for auspicious timing... Like Kafka and Orwell, Atwood has become part of the public discourse -- Lisa Allardice * Guardian *

Fluent, imaginative and provocative -- Stuart Kelly * Scotland on Sunday *

It is an addictively readable, fastpaced adventure... the rhyme of reality with fiction is loud and devastatingly clear... In The Testaments, Atwood changes the emphasis of the plot, to strike a note of optimism - a hopeful reminder that resistance is possible and such regimes do eventually always fall -- Holly Williams * Independent *