A runaway bestseller on its publication in 1887, H. Rider Haggard’s She is a Victorian thrill ride of a novel, featuring a lost African kingdom ruled by a mysterious, implacable queen; ferocious wildlife and yawning abysses; and an eerie love story that spans two thousand years. She has bewitched readers from Freud and Jung to C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien; in her Introduction to this Modern Library Paperback Classic—which includes period illustrations by Maurice Greiffenhagen and Charles H. M. Kerr—Margaret Atwood asserts that the awe-inspiring Ayesha, “She-who-must-be-obeyed,” is “a permanent feature of the human imagination.”

Atwood's Booker-winning novel, now in paperback. A brilliant, multi-layered piece of work, spanning the twentieth century, by one of the most important and highly regarded novelists working today. 'Atwood has never written with more flair and v

The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: 'Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.' They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura?s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

'Dieci giorni dopo la fine della guerra mia sorella Laura precipitò con l'auto giù da un ponte.' Sono queste le prime parole, semplici ma inquietanti, con cui Iris Chase, la voce narrante del romanzo, decide, a ottantadue anni, di raccontare le tormentate vicende della sua famiglia nell'arco di quasi un secolo. Ma sin dall'inizio il racconto di Iris viene interrotto dagli stralci di un altro romanzo, una scabrosa storia d'amore scritta dalla sorella tragicamente morta e pubblicata postuma con enorme successo: 'L'assassino cieco'. Il protagonista del romanzo, un uomo in fuga, inventa per la sua amante una storia di fantascienza su un pianeta inverosimile, dando, così, vita a un terzo livello narrativo.

Brimming over with the inspirational words and thoughts of some of our finest writers, Cries of the Spirit is a beautiful sourcebook of poetry and prose in praise of life and all that it entails. Here women's voices fill the age-old silence about matters central to their experience-from menstruation, sexual intimacy, and childbirth to caretaking, household rituals, and death. These writings represent a healing vision of the sacred that emerges from the particular consciousness of women-a vision that partakes of the world of earth and flesh.
With contributions by Maya Angelou, Julia Alvarez, Margaret Atwood, Hildegard of Bingen, Lucille Clifton, Annie Dillard, Joy Harjo, Erica Jong, Denise Levertov, Audre Lorde, Kathleen Norris, Marge Piercy, Starhawk, Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, and others.

Il volume presenta una scelta delle migliori poesie di Margaret Atwood in edizione bilingue.

1. Rennie has a series of dreams in which her grandmother complains that her hands are missing. Rennie, a writer, interprets this as dream-evidence that her grandmother is dead. What does a loss of one's hands represent? What does it mean for a writer in particular? 2. Atwood writes, 'The number of things Rennie thinks ought to happen to her in foreign countries is limited, but the number of things she fears may happen is much larger.' For Rennie, which type of experience proves to be more transformative? 3. 'Other people make statements, I just write them down,' claims Rennie. Consider the difference between observing and reporting actions as opposed to engaging in them. By observing, does one become a de facto participant? 4. In St. Antoine, Rennie is an 'other' fivefold: she is single, a woman, a reporter, a white, and a Canadian. Yet each of her distinct identities frequently clash with one another. As a white Canadian, she allied with a strong majority; as a single woman, she represents a vulnerable minority. At times, however, her status as both a Canadian and a woman earns her the epithets 'sweet' and naive'. How do the many layers of her outsiderdom intersect? How do they reinforce or invalidate each other? 5. After her relationship with Jake, Rennie finds herself infatuated with two men--Daniel and Paul--each of whom offers her an incomplete sort of relationship. What does each have to offer her? How do they complement each other? 6. The specter of the man who broke into her apartment and left a length of rope behind follows Rennie on her travels. Who is this man? What does he represent?' 7. Compare Jocasta and Lora. What insights does each offer into the nature of women's' friendships? The alliances that women form? The kinds of choices women make throughout their lives? 8. After Minnow's assassination, Rennie realizes that he asked her to write about St. Antoine 'so there would be less chance of this happening to him.' What control do words--via the media and the press, have over the course of unfolding events? 9. Consider Jocasta's and Rennie's assessments of men's and women's relationships and the new crises and anxieties that sexual equality poses. Do you agree with their perception of the situation? How, if at all, has sexual politics changed in the sixteen years since this novel was written? 10. While imprisoned, Rennie discovers that after listening to distant screams long enough, her ear tricks her brain into thinking she's hearing a party. What other means does her brain and body have of enabling her to survive her imprisonment? How does the human body cope with assaults imposed from within (cancer, disease, loneliness) as opposed to those from outside from outside (torture, prison)? Does she have more control over one than the other? 11. On the plane ride home, Rennie notes a significant change. She realizes, however, that what has changed are not the ice cubes, the people, and the world around her, but the way she notices them. How have her experiences changed her? What events in your life cause you to view everyday sights and events differently?

Joan Foster is the bored wife of a myopic ban-the-bomber.  She takes off overnight as Canada's new superpoet, pens lurid gothics on the sly, attracts a blackmailing reporter, skids cheerfully in and out of menacing plots, hair-raising traps, and passionate trysts, and lands dead and well in Terremoto, Italy.  In this remarkable, poetic, and magical novel, Margaret Atwood proves yet again why she is considered to be one of the most important and accomplished writers of our time.

Part detective novel, part psychological thriller, Surfacing is the story of a talented woman artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec.  Setting out with her lover and another young couple, she soon finds herself captivated by the isolated setting, where a marriage begins to fall apart, violence and death lurk just beneath the surface, and sex becomes a catalyst for conflict and dangerous choices.  Surfacing is a work permeated with an aura of suspense, complex with layered meanings, and written in brilliant, diamond-sharp prose.  Here is a rich mine of ideas from an extraordinary writer about contemporary life and nature, families and marriage, and about women fragmented...and becoming whole.

This splendid volume of short fiction testifies to Margaret Atwood's startlingly original voice, full of a rare intensity and exceptional intelligence.  Her men and women still miscommunicate, still remain separate in different rooms, different houses, or even different worlds.  With brilliant flashes of fantasy, humor, and unexpected violence, the stories reveal the complexities of human relationships and bring to life characters who touch us deeply, evoking terror and laughter, compassion and recognition--and dramatically demonstrate why Margaret Atwood is one of the most important writers in English today.

In the world of the near future, who will control women's bodies?

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.

Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now....

Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.

In each of these tales Margaret Atwood deftly illuminates the single instant that shapes a whole life: in a few brief pages we watch as characters progress from the vulnerabilities of adolescence through the passions of youth into the precarious complexities of middle age.  By superimposing the past on the present, Atwood paints interior landscapes shaped by time, regret, and life's lost chances, endowing even the banal with a sense of mystery.  Richly layered and disturbing, poignant at times and scathingly witty at others, the stories in Wilderness Tips take us into the strange and secret places of the heart and inform the familiar world in which we live with truths that cut to the bone.


Margaret Atwood is the author of over twenty-five books, including fiction, poetry, and essays.  Among her most recent works are the bestselling novels Alias Grace and The Robber Bride and the collections Wilderness Tips and Good Bones and Simple Murders.  She lives in Toronto.

Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices--after the rules have changed.  Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man.  She has just lost her latest lover to suicide.  Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men.  Hanging over them all is the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover...and the dizzying threat of three lives careening inevitably toward the same climax.

Ever since her engagement, the strangest thing has been happening to Marian McAlpin: she can't eat.  First meat.  Then eggs, vegetables, cake, pumpkin seeds--everything!  Worse yet, she has the crazy feeling that she's being eaten.  Marian ought to feel consumed with passion, but she really just feels...consumed.  A brilliant and powerful work rich in irony and metaphor, The Edible Woman is an unforgettable masterpiece by a true master of contemporary literary fiction.

Cat's Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman--but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories. Disturbing, hilarious, and compassionate, Cat's Eye is a breathtaking novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knot of her life.

Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride is inspired by 'The Robber Bridegroom,' a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends, Tony,  

Charis, and Roz. All three 'have lost men, spirit, money, and time to their old college acquaintance, Zenia. At various times, and in various emotional disguises, Zenia has insinuated her way into their lives and practically demolished them.

To Tony, who almost lost her husband and jeopardized her academic career, Zenia is 'a lurking enemy  commando.' To Roz, who did lose her husband and almost her magazine, Zenia is 'a cold and treacherous bitch.' To Charis, who lost a boyfriend, quarts of vegetable juice and some pet chickens, Zenia is a kind of zombie, maybe 'soulless'' (Lorrie Moore, New York Times Book  Review). In love and war, illusion and deceit, Zenia's subterranean malevolence takes us deep into her enemies' pasts.

By turns humorous and warm, stark and frightening, Bluebeard'S Egg glows with childhood memories, the reality of parents growing old, and the casual cruelty men and women inflict on each other. Here is the familiar outer world of family summers at remote lakes, winters of political activism, and seasons of exotic friends, mundane lives, and unexpected loves. But here too is the inner world of hidden places and all that emerges from them-the intimately personal, the fantastic, the shockingly real...whether it's what lives in a mysterious locked room or the secret feelings we all conceal. In this dramatic and far-ranging collection, Margaret Atwood proves why she is a true master of the genre.

In Alias Grace, bestselling author Margaret Atwood has written her most captivating, disturbing, and ultimately satisfying work since The Handmaid's Tale. She takes us back in time and into the life of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century.

Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders.

Dr. Simon Jordan, an up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness, is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Is Grace a female fiend? A bloodthirsty femme fatale? Or is she the victim of circumstances?

A lead title for Little, Brown this month is the latest paperback from Margaret Atwood, in which she weaves a compelling tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery around the true story of Grace Marks, convicted of the murder of her master in Canad

Five new reissues of Atwood's brilliant novels and short story collections, each with a stunning new look. All were bestsellers on their original publication.

New edition of Atwood's modern classic, exploring issues of sex, power and friendship.