Margaret Atwood will tell the story of her life and career in a “memoir of sorts,” Doubleday announced in a news release.
The press will publish the Canadian literary legend’s Book of Lives in the fall. It says the book “explores the life and work of one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures, from her peripatetic childhood in the Canadian far north, through the writing of The Handmaid’s Tale, to her position today as revered truth-teller and literary icon.”
Atwood, who is 85, launched her literary career in 1961 with the poetry collection Double Persephone and published four more poetry books before making her fiction debut in 1969 with the novel The Edible Woman.
She went on to publish dozens more books across genres, most notably The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian classic that was adapted into a 1990 film and a television series that premiered in 2017. Her other novels include Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake, and The Testaments. She has won the Booker Prize twice, in 2000 and 2019.
“I sweated blood over this book—there was too much life to stuff in, and if I’d died at 25 like John Keats, it could have been shorter—but I also laughed a lot,” Atwood said in a statement. “A memoir is what you can remember, and you remember mostly stupid things, catastrophes, revenges, and times of political horror, so I put those in—but I also added moments of joy, and surprising events and, of course, the books. I hope you’ll have as much fun reading Book of Lives as I did writing it.”
Book of Lives is slated for publication on Nov. 4.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
