Books
What's next for Gilead? Margaret Atwood announces sequel to 'The Handmaid's Tale'
The sequel 'The Testaments' will not be connected to the TV series and will be published in 2019
And so to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a work of uncommon intelligence and prescience, about the control and killing of women. The book and the first TV series were unsettling and thought-provoking, ending with a intriguingly ambiguous scene that hinted at hope for the main character Offred.
The second series, however, abandoned all obliqueness and descended into fetishistic violence. The social commentary was blasted away by an unremitting brutality that left us inured to its horror. Pity Offred in the third series, now in production.
Now Margaret Atwood has announced she is writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, titled The Testaments to be published next year.
“Dear Readers,” she writes, “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.’”
The publishers have stressed that the new book is not connected to The Handmaid’s Tale TV series, so let’s hope that Atwood will return to form.