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Margaret Atwood is writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale and we can barely contain our excitement!

Her inspiration for this book may have some squirming in their chairs.

Mar­garet At­wood, the writer of The Hand­maid’s Tale, which has been turned into a mega-suc­cess­ful Emmy-award-win­ning Hulu TV se­ries star­ring Elis­a­beth Moss, has an­nounced her se­quel to the 1985 cult clas­sic novel.

In a mes­sage, At­wood wrote: “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.”

Be­cause, while we don’t know a lot about where Gilead will be 15 years on from where The Hand­maid’s Tale left off, in the time since the re­lease of the first book, geopo­lit­i­cal at­ti­tudes to­wards women have changed, but not whole­sale, and change, as the orig­i­nal book out­lines, can be un­done.

Margaret Atwood

The Hand­maid’s Tale‘s sym­bol­ism can now be spot­ted in the anti-Trump protests, and the nas­ti­est facts of the book – all taken from real-life sit­u­a­tions – still res­onate to­day with le­gions of women – and men – fed up with the tra­di­tional ways in which wom­en’s bod­ies and be­hav­iours are po­liced.

As a dystopic writer, it seems un­likely that At­wood will write a book all about the happy-ever-af­ter of Gilead, so just take a big look around you to see the nasty ways in which women, glob­ally, are treated un­der the pa­tri­archy to get an idea of what the book’s go­ing to look like. Not ex­actly an easy piece of chick-lit, what­ever that is these days.

Though At­wood did­n’t name Don­ald Trump, the press re­lease did, say­ing the story has be­come “a sym­bol of the move­ment against him, stand­ing for fe­male em­pow­er­ment and re­sis­tance in the face of misog­yny and the rolling back of wom­en’s rights around the world”.

One thing we know for sure is that The Tes­ta­ments will be re­leased on Sep­tem­ber 10th, 2019 – one for your brand-spank­ing new di­aries! – and will aim to put to rest 33 years of unan­swered ques­tions.

Via Grazia

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