Must-Read Books by Margaret Atwood

At last, after nearly 35 years, Margaret Atwood returns to the Republic of Gilead. As timely as ever, Atwood’s highly anticipated sequel introduces readers to Agnes Jemima (a devout 16-year-old facing an arranged marriage), Aunt Lydia (one of four Founding Aunts who is revered by the Republic), and Daisy (a teenager whose life isn’t quite what it seems). Through their voices, the dread of Gilead and its slipping grip on its citizens is revealed. A testimony of suffering, survival, and rebellion, Atwood’s latest novel proves why she’s one of literature’s greatest storytellers.

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian bestseller, the US is overthrown by a supremacist misogynistic theocracy called the Republic of Gilead. Once in power, Gilead ships any women who they deem undesirable to work in brothels as Jezebels or to clean toxic waste in the Colonies as Unwomen. The rest of the Republic’s women (save for those married to Gilead officials, the iron fisted Aunts, and the Econowives) are forced to become Handmaids (those who are fertile) or Marthas (those who are infertile). Through the eyes of a Handmaid named Offred, readers witness the depravity of the Republic’s violence. An urgent and timeless classic, Atwood’s novel is just as chilling on the page as it is on screen.

Margaret Atwood’s inventive retelling of The Tempest follows Felix Phillips, a frustrated actor and impresario, as he reckons with an ego-shattering betrayal. To cope, Felix adopts the alias of Mr. Duke and takes a job at the Fletcher County Correctional Institute as a part of their Literacy Through Literature program. While there, he plots his revenge to overthrow his former colleagues while the inmates perform The Tempest. A dark, yet comical commentary on creativity, politics, and loss, Atwood’s Hag-Seed is a notable metafictive meditation on power and its ability to corrupt.

Inspired by the 1843 murders of a Scottish farmer and his housekeeper, Alias Grace reimagines the biography of Grace Marks who is known to this day as one of Canada’s most infamous historical figures. Given a life sentence for crimes that she insists she can’t remember committing, Grace recounts her life to Dr. Jordan, a psychiatrist hired by a committee of empathetic Methodists. Through Atwood’s skillful eye and spellbinding prose, Grace’s mind and her motivations are excavated in tandem with the morality of the world that surrounds her.

In an instant, readers meet Charmaine and Stan, a couple who’ve been forced to live in their car in the wake of an economic disaster. When they hear about the Positron Project, the two consider it an upgrade. Beneath the utopian façade of the Project lies a sinister truth: members are forced to cohabitate with other couples and required to split their time between their home and prison on a bimonthly basis. Gradually, things begin to splinter and Charmaine and Stan are forced to reckon with what they once thought would save them. A satisfyingly alarming examination of intimacy and technology, The Heart Goes Last is thriller you won’t forget.

The MaddAddam Trilogy begins with Oryx and Crake, which takes place in a not-too-distant future where humankind is irrevocably altered by genetic engineering and a resulting plague. Throughout the novel, Snowman grapples with his grief over his best friend Crake’s passing and losing Oryx, the love of his life. In the trilogy’s second book, The Year of the Flood, a waterless flood threatens Earth’s remaining human population as a trapezist named Ren (who once dated Snowman) and Toby (A member God’s Gardeners, a religious sect of survivors) attempt to find safety in a crumbling civilization filled with genetically modified humans and ecological danger. The trilogy ends with MaddAddam, which begins on the heels of the waterless flood’s destruction, following Toby and the Children of Crake as they attempt to build a new world. Collectively and singularly, each arc of The MaddAddam Trilogy is doubly an epic and a warning.

Margaret Atwood’s seamless collection of linked stories, Moral Disorder begins with “Bad News,” a timely and unnerving account of a political and ecological disaster told from the perspective of a first person then omniscient narrator named Nell. Ebbing with ease through the past and the present, each narrative gives readers a deeper understanding of the world that Atwood’s protagonists inhabit and their place within it. Each story is a vivid portraiture of the power of familial bonds, sacrifice, and love.

The stories and illustrations within Good Bones and Simple Murders tease the line between folklore, fabulism and incantations. Filled with retellings of fairy tales, parabolic musings on writing, and scathing (yet satisfying) critiques of masculinity’s shortcomings, this slim yet searing collection makes the most of brevity, subtly, and unabashedly grim endings. Perhaps best read under a full moon a night, the pages of this book wield a strange magic that only reveals itself to those who are willing to see it.

A collection of vivid reworkings of ancient myths, fables, a list of synopses for yet to be written novels, The Tent is a strange yet enchanting offering from the legendary Margaret Atwood. Delectably postmodern riffs on mortality, haunting imagery, and abstract origin stories that could easily double as apocalyptic ends, the pages of this book feel like a surviving text overlooked by the Gilead’s zealous Eyes and Commanders of the Faithful. Each page shimmers with the boundless imagination of a literary trailblazer.

In Negotiating with the Dead, Margaret Atwood writes, “All writers learn from the dead. As long as you continue to write, you continue to explore the work of writers who have preceded you … all must descend to where the stories are kept.” Here, Atwood highlights the power of the page and its ability to capture new ideas, new stories, and new horizons. Rather than something to be feared, a writer’s descent into the liminal space between the past and the present as Atwood suggests, leads to where narrative blooms.

First released in 1977, Margaret Atwood’s debut short story collection Dancing Girls centers female desire, the consequences of suppressed appetites, and existential doom. Readers will find themselves unable to turn away as a woman’s sanity disintegrates in “Polarities,” an older woman plans for the end of the world in “When It Happens,” and a romance ruptures in “Under Glass.” An under-celebrated reminder of the longevity of Atwood’s prose, Dancing Girls should be on the shelf of anyone who claims to be a beloved fan of her work.

Throughout Surfacing, an unnamed protagonist in Margaret Atwood’s second novel travels to a remote island in Northern Quebec in search of her father. Accompanied by her boyfriend (who she’s no longer in love with) and two friends (a couple whose relationship is also fracturing), Atwood’s reluctant heroine grapples with memories of her childhood alongside her grief over the loss of a past lover and the pregnancy that tore them apart. A psychological thriller about the unpredictable chaos of nature, lust, and love, Surfacing is an unforgettable story about a young woman’s unapologetically feral reclamation of herself.

Shifting from first person then to second and then third, Margaret Atwood’s debut novel follows Marian as she grows less and less certain of her future. No longer content with the prospects of marriage and a comfortable job as a market researcher, she becomes increasingly repulsed by food as she begins to feel more and more devoured by the man and the life she once thought she loved. A masterful reflection on gender, tradition, and embodiment, The Edible Woman will make you laugh then force you to reconsider your definition of happily ever after.

The ten stories that appear in Wilderness Tips explore the complexities and unruly nature of human closeness, mortality, and the spaces we occupy. Through each story, Margaret Atwood delves deep into psyches of her protagonists, using them as an unflinching mirror that forces readers to reckon with their own contradictions. Just as a corpse can become the catalyst for an epiphany (The Age of Lead”) and the removal of a tumor helps a woman let go of her guilt, Wilderness Tips urges its audience to evolve, even if change coincides with discomfort.