Real Weddings: Kelly and Sean’s show-stopping wedding in Co Kerry
Real Weddings: Kelly and Sean’s show-stopping wedding in Co Kerry

Shayna Healy

WIN a bundle of Max Benjamin wall fragrance diffusers worth €165
WIN a bundle of Max Benjamin wall fragrance diffusers worth €165

Megan Burns

If networking is a super power then Mary McKenna deserves a cape
If networking is a super power then Mary McKenna deserves a cape

Fiona Alston

The sunglasses team IMAGE are reaching for this summer
The sunglasses team IMAGE are reaching for this summer

Sarah Gill

Page Turners: ‘Assembling Ailish’ author Sharon Guard
Page Turners: ‘Assembling Ailish’ author Sharon Guard

Sarah Gill

A seafront Skerries home has been given a luxe update with rich colours and hotel-inspired details
A seafront Skerries home has been given a luxe update with rich colours and hotel-inspired...

Megan Burns

Calling all Irish entrepreneurs: The Pitch 2025 is open for applications
Calling all Irish entrepreneurs: The Pitch 2025 is open for applications

IMAGE

Money moves: Smart financial strategies for every chapter of your life
Money moves: Smart financial strategies for every chapter of your life

IMAGE

Tried and tested: the world’s most powerful cordless stick vacuum cleaner
Tried and tested: the world’s most powerful cordless stick vacuum cleaner

Megan Burns

WIN a three-course dinner for two with Champagne at Forbes Street by Gareth Mullins
WIN a three-course dinner for two with Champagne at Forbes Street by Gareth Mullins

IMAGE

Image / Editorial

Margaret Atwood announces sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale


By Edaein OConnell
28th Nov 2018

On Silence-Rewriting a country toward a just and peaceful Canada.

Margaret Atwood announces sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

Author Margaret Atwood has announced she will release a sequel to her landmark novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which will be titled The Testaments.

In a press release announcing the news, the author said, “‘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.”

She also announced the news on her Twitter page to the delight of her fans.

 

The Handmaid’s Tale original novel revolves around the struggle of one woman to survive in a totalitarian regime which oppresses women, using them only to procreate and leaving them uneducated and without rights. It is set in a dystopian America which is known in the book as Gilead.

The second book will be narrated by three female characters and will take place 15 years after Offred’s final scene, which ended with the main character being taken away in a van by people she believed were part of the underground resistance. The ending was very much left open to interpretation.

Becky Hardie, deputy publishing director of UK publishers Chatto & Windus, said: “As a society, we’ve never needed Margaret Atwood more. The moment the van door slams on Offred’s future at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the most brilliantly ambiguous endings in literature. I cannot wait to find out what’s been going on in Atwood’s Gilead – and what that might tell us about our own times.”

Many have compared The Handmaid’s Tale to modern events, such as the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and it quickly became a symbol of the movement against him and stood for the repression of women’s rights all over the world.

The sequel will not be connected to the television adaption of The Handmaid’s Tale which became a huge success in 2017 and has already spanned two seasons, in which the second progressed beyond the events of the original 1985 novel.

The Testaments will be released worldwide on September 10, 2019.