Reading Your Way Through Margaret Atwood

Begin with The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), the book that made Atwood a cultural force. Set in the theocratic state of Gilead, it explores the violent stripping away of women’s rights and the slow-burning resistance that follows. This chilling dystopia feels disturbingly timeless. The acclaimed TV adaptation starring Elisabeth Moss has brought the story to a whole new generation and is airing its final season this spring.

Follow up with The Testaments (2019), her Booker Prize-winning sequel set fifteen years later, told through three different voices including Aunt Lydia. It expands the Gilead universe and offers both chilling revelations and a more hopeful tone. It’s best appreciated with The Handmaid’s Tale fresh in mind.

Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts is a long-awaited memoir, available to preorder and releasing in November 2025. If you've ever wondered how Margaret Atwood became, well, Margaret Atwood—this is the one to read. She traces her path from a wild childhood in northern Quebec to the writing of her most iconic books, sharing the real-life moments behind the fiction.

If you love literary mysteries, The Blind Assassin (2000) is essential reading. It opens with a woman’s mysterious death and follows her sister, Iris, as she looks back on their tangled family history. Woven into the story is a novel-within-a-novel—a sci-fi tale written by a secret lover. The novel is rich in atmosphere, full of shifting perspectives, and rewards close reading. It won the Booker Prize and remains one of Atwood’s most critically acclaimed and intricately constructed works

Alias Grace (1996) is a psychologically layered historical novel based on the real 1843 murder case of Grace Marks, a domestic servant accused of killing her employer. The story unfolds through interviews and fragmented memories, asking what truth really looks like when power, class, and gender distort the lens. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a Netflix miniseries.

Old Babes in the Wood: Stories (2023) is one of Atwood’s more recent works, a captivating collection of fifteen short stories that explore love, loss, and memory. With her signature wit and insight, she examines family dynamics and relationships in tales like “Impatient Griselda,” a fresh take on folklore, and “My Evil Mother,” a fantastical mother-daughter story. It’s a must-read for anyone who loves Atwood’s short fiction.

In Hag-Seed (2016), Atwood reimagines Shakespeare’s The Tempest through a disgraced theatre director leading a prison literacy program. The result is a novel that’s full of theatrical flair, clever parallels, and emotional weight, especially as it explores grief, art, and the possibility of redemption.

This boxed set of the MaddAddam Trilogy, which includes Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013), is perfect for diving into Atwood’s full dystopian vision. Each book explores the collapse from different perspectives—scientists, eco-survivalists, cult members—and builds toward a grim but darkly hopeful picture of what might come next. Oryx and Crake was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and the trilogy has become a landmark of speculative fiction.

For something shorter and more playful, try The Penelopiad (2005), a retelling of The Odyssey from Penelope’s perspective. Speaking from the afterlife, Penelope reexamines her story and the fate of the twelve maids hanged by Odysseus.

Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems: 1961–2023 (2023) offers a sweeping retrospective of Atwood’s poetry. Spanning six decades, the collection blends myth, wit, rage, and tenderness—offering a more intimate angle on the concerns that run through her fiction. It’s a fitting companion to her novels or a starting point for readers drawn to her lyrical, condensed voice.