![]() I reread The Handmaid's Tale before starting The Testaments, my first time returning to it since I read it in my early 20s. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but that just brings us to the more important question: what does The Testaments accomplish? What does it tell us that The Handmaid's Tale didn't? An idealist would say that this is just the right moment, when far-right, fascist movements all over the world are gaining prominence, many of them with an essentialist, instrumentalized view of women's role in society at the very core of their ideology. Why choose to answer (some) of those questions now, thirty-five years after the original novel's publication? A cynic would say that this is a cash-in, a reflection of how the original novel has dominated the zeitgeist since the premiere of the television series based on it in 2017. ![]() ![]() Why write a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale? Why write one in 2019? In the acknowledgements section of The Testaments, Margaret Atwood writes that, since the publication of Handmaid in 1985, she has received multiple queries about the fate of its characters and world. ![]()
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