Lit in Translation

The Testaments

The Testaments

Margaret Atwood (born 1939)

English editions

Written in English

* Affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate and a Bookshop.org affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases. The price stays the same for you.

Gilead, the theocracy that rules what was New England and keeps fertile women as handmaids, has lasted for years, but cracks are beginning to show. Three women set down their testimonies. Aunt Lydia, now old and powerful, an educator and keeper of the regime's secrets, writes in her library of how she turned from one of its prisoners into one of its builders in the earliest days. Agnes Jemima, raised in Gilead, learns as she nears thirteen that the woman who bore her was a handmaid who ran away, and chooses training as an aunt over marriage. In Toronto, sixteen-year-old Daisy discovers that she too was born to a handmaid after the couple she believed were her parents are killed. Aunt Lydia draws the two girls into a plan of her own.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Genres
Speculative, Politics (assigned by AI)
Set in
United States, Canada
First published
2019
Author's age
80 when first published
ISBN

9781784742324 (Chatto & Windus, United Kingdom)

9780385543781 (Nan A. Talese, United States)

9781784708214 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

9780525562627 (Vintage, United States)

9798217010059 (Vintage, United States)

More
Wikidata