MARGARET ATWOOD (b.1939)
The Testaments. London: Chatto & Windus, 2019.
First UK edition of the Booker Prize-winning sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, annotated by the author with around 1000 words of commentary and augmented with a sealed envelope containing Atwood’s ‘completion charts’ tracking the progress of her manuscript.

Atwood’s annotations, in black ink throughout, are a testament to the novelist’s art, illuminating the influences from the world of politics, religion, and literature that helped shape the narrative. They refer frequently to the crimes of dictatorships throughout history, many of which are replicated in Gilead, and to the characteristics which are ‘true of all regimes of fear’. Atwood also brings to light the literary allusions layered throughout the text, amongst which are works by Blake, Dante, Beckett, Plato, Machiavelli, Milton, Zola, Orwell, Woolf, and Charlotte Bronte. Notes on the symbols preceding chapter headings and to the colour of the silk bookmark show the author’s close attention to the visual and physical aspects of book production. A summary of the prospective novel, produced for her publisher in Feb 2017 before her writing commenced in earnest, is reproduced in type and pasted on an endpaper. The envelope containing Atwood’s ‘completion charts’ for her manuscript is sealed with three butterfly stickers and its contents are therefore unseen by the cataloguer.

Octavo. Original dark blue embossed boards, pictorial dust jacket with sticker.

Buyer’s premium is payable, with a significant portion donated by Christie’s to English PEN, but note that no VAT is payable on hammer price or buyer’s premium.
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