The Handmaid’s Second Tale...
Sequel after 33 years inspired by MeToo
IT BECAME a hugely successful TV series just as the MeToo movement got off the ground.
And now author Margaret Atwood has confirmed she is writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – inspired, she says, by the ‘world we’re living in’.
The follow-up, called The Testaments, will be set 15 years on from the original book’s final scene.
The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985, was set in a dystopia where women were stripped of their rights and forced into sexual servitude.
Miss Atwood, 79, has confirmed the sequel will also be set in the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, which was formerly the United States. And she suggested it may have been influenced by recent events including the rise of MeToo and other sex scandals.
In a statement the Canadian 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.’ Sales of the first novel soared last year after the TV show, broadcast on Channel 4, became a critical and word-of-mouth success.
Critics said its themes had resonated with audiences in the age of MeToo and Donald Trump, when issues such as sexual harassment have gained greater prominence. A press release for the sequel said the original had become a ‘symbol of the movement’ against Mr Trump, ‘ standing for female empowerment and resistance in the face of misogyny’.
A number of women’s rights groups have adopted the handmaids’ red cloaks and white bonnets as a symbol of female oppression at protests around the world. The TV show, which was first shown in 2017, has won six Emmy Awards for its first two seasons and is currently in production on its third.
The Testaments, which is narrated by three female voices, will be released in September next year. Becky Hardie, deputy director of publishers Chatto & Windus, said: ‘As a society, we’ve never needed Margaret Atwood more.
‘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.’