"‘Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.’ Thus begins The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood’s stunning new novel. Laura Chase’s older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and eighty-two, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the Firs War. While coping with her unreliable body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister’s tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin, a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase no only notoriety but also a devoted cult following: as Iris says, she herself lives ‘in the long shadow cast by Laura’.
Sexually explicit for its time, The Blind Assassin describes a risky affair in the turbulent thirties between a wealthy young woman and a man on the run. During their secret meetings in rented rooms, the lovers concoct a pulp fantasy set on Planet Zycron. As the invented story twists through love and sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real one; while events in both move closer to war and catastrophe. By turns lyrical, outrageous, formidable, compelling and funny, this is a novel filled with deep humour and dark drama. It is Margaret Atwood at her breathtaking best.

Margaret Atwood is the author more than thirty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her novels include The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye - booth shortlisted for the Booker Prize - The Robber Bridge, and her most recent Alias Grace, which was also shortlisted for the Brooker Prize and won the Giller Prize in Canada and Premiro Mondello in Italy. Her work is acclaimed internationally and has been translated into thirty-three languages. She is the recipient of many literary awards and honours from varous countries, including Britain, Italy, France, Sweden and Norway, as well as Canada and the United States. Margaret Atwood lives on Toronto, with writer Graeme Gibson.
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