Margaret Atwood, página 3 de 14

Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.' Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling victim? Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery.

Devant la chute drastique de la fécondité, la république de Gilead, récemment fondée par des fanatiques religieux, a réduit au rang d'esclaves sexuelles les quelques femmes encore fertiles. Vêtue de rouge, Defred, « servante écarlate » parmi d'autres, a qui l'on a ôté jusqu'a son nom, met donc son corps au service de son Commandant et de son épouse. Le soir, en regagnant sa chambre a l'austérité monacale, elle songe au temps ou les femmes avaient le droit de lire, de travailler... En rejoignant un réseau secret, elle va tout tenter pour recouvrer sa liberté. Paru pour la première fois en 1985, La Servante écarlate s'est vendu a des millions d'exemplaires a travers le monde. Devenu un classique de la littérature anglophone, ce roman, qui n'est pas sans évoquer le 1984 de George Orwell, décrit un quotidien glaçant qui n'a jamais semblé aussi proche, nous rappelant combien fragiles sont nos libertés. La série adaptée de ce chef-d'oeuvre de Margaret Atwood, diffusée sous le titre original The Handmaid's Tale, avec Elisabeth Moss dans le rôle principal, a été unanimement saluée par la critique.

1873. Grace Marks, seize ans, est condamnée a la réclusion a perpétuité pour le double meurtre de son jeune employeur et de sa gouvernante. Victime sous emprise ou monstre en jupons ? Face a l'échec des rapports psychiatriques, le Docteur Jordan s'empare du dossier, bien décidé a la sortir de son amnésie. Mais pourquoi lui cache-t-elle les troublants rêves qui hantent ses nuits ?

1859. Grace Marks, condamnée à perpétuité pour deux meurtres dont elle fut accusée alors qu''elle était âgée de seize ans, rencontre le docteur Simon Jordan, spécialiste de la maladie mentale, qui ve

Stan et Charmaine ont été durement touchés par la crise économique américaine. Tombant sur une publicité vantant les mérites d'une ville merveilleuse, le couple décide de partir. A Consilience, chacun a un travail, un logement, oeuvre pour la communauté, mais un mois sur deux vit en prison. Stan et Charmaine sont heureux jusqu'a être frappés par la tentation, le conformisme et la paranoïa.

Margaret Atwood puts the human heart to the ultimate test in an utterly brilliant new novel that is as visionary as"The Handmaid''s Tale"and as richly imagined as"The Blind Assassin." Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. Once their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their "civilian" homes. At first, this doesn''t seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have a roof over one''s head and food to eat. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan''s life in danger. With each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled."

Pese a ser conocida sobre todo como novelista, la escritora canadiense Margaret Atwood (Ottawa, 1939) ha publicado varios libros de poemas, entre los que destaca LOS DIARIOS DE SUSANNA MOODIE (1970), reescritura de un testimonio que los escolares canadienses estudian como emblema de la vida de los pioneros ingleses en su país. A la superficialidad con que la escritora decimonónica Susanna Modie narró las dificultades de su vida en el bosque (ROUGHING IT IN THE BUSH, 1852), Margaret Atwood da en estos poemas una cohesión reflexiva, un sustrato de pensamiento que, más que recrear, lleva el viejo texto hacia el gran libro que no consiguió ser. LOS DIARIOS DE SUSANNA MOODIE constituye, de este modo, una crónica revivida desde la comprensión y ordenada desde la distancia, además de una indagación afectiva en una esquizofrenia que Margaret Atwood eleva a la categoría de enfermedad nacional del Canadá: Susanna Moodie es un personaje fascinado por un paisaje que al mismo tiempo le destruye, una promulgadora del amor a una tierra en que se siente extraña. Tras su muerte Susanna Moodie será, en el siglo XX, una mujer a la que la ciudad le parece una selva sin explorar.

Shakespeare''s play of magic and illusion reimagined by one of the world''s great literary innovators.Its got a thunderstorm in it. And revenge. Definitely revenge.Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now hes staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds.Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge.After twelve years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. Its magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?Margaret Atwoods novel take on Shakespeares play of enchantment, revenge and second chances leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own.

Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride is inspired by "The Robber Bridegroom," a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends, Tony,Charis, and Roz. All three "have lost men, spirit, money, and time to their old college acquaintance, Zenia. At various times, and in various emotional disguises, Zenia has insinuated her way into their lives and practically demolished them. To Tony, who almost lost her husband and jeopardized her academic career, Zenia is 'a lurking enemy commando.' To Roz, who did lose her husband and almost her magazine, Zenia is 'a cold and treacherous bitch.' To Charis, who lost a boyfriend, quarts of vegetable juice and some pet chickens, Zenia is a kind of zombie, maybe 'soulless'" (Lorrie Moore, New York Times Book Review). In love and war, illusion and deceit, Zenia's subterranean malevolence takes us deep into her enemies' pasts.

Margaret Atwood''s classic novel, THE HANDMAID''S TALE, is about the future. Now, in ORYX AND CRAKE, the future has changed. It''s much worse. And we''re well on the road to it now. The narrator of Margaret Atwood''s riveting new novel is Snowman, self-named though not self-created. As the story begins, he''s sleeping in a tree, wearing a dirty old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beautiful and beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. Earlier, Snowman''s life was one of comparative privilege. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Was he himself in any way responsible? Why is he now left alone with his bizarre memories - except for the more-than-perfect, green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster? He explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake''s high-tech bubble dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.With breathtaking command of her shocking material and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into a less-than-brave new world, an outlandish yet wholly believable space populated by a cast of characters who will continue to inhabit your dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.

Now in paperback, the Booker Prize-winning sensation combines gothic drama, romantic suspense, and a science fiction yarn in an entrancing novel of uncommon intricacy and grace. "A killer novel".--"The Christian Science Monitor". Author lectures.

Atwood triumphs with these dazzling, personal stories in her first collection since "Wilderness Tips," In these ten interrelated stories Atwood traces the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it, while evoking the drama and the humour that colour common experiences -- the birth of a baby, divorce and remarriage, old age and death. With settings ranging from Toronto, northern Quebec, and rural Ontario, the stories begin in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. Then the narrative goes back in time to the forties and moves chronologically forward toward the present. In ""The Art of Cooking and Serving,"" the twelve-year-old narrator does her best to accommodate the arrival of a baby sister. After she boldly declares her independence, we follow the narrator into young adulthood and then through a complex relationship. In "The Entities," the story of two women haunted by the past unfolds. The magnificent last two stories reveal the heartbreaking old age of parents but circle back again to childhood, to complete the cycle. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, "Moral Disorder" displays Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage. This is vintage Atwood, writing at the height of her powers.

Home das Neves, coñecido como Jimmy antes de que a humanidade fose devastada por unha praga, loita por sobrevivir nun mundo onde tal vez el sexa o derradeiro humano, mentres lamenta a perda do seu mellor amigo, Crake, e da fermosa e misteriosa Oryx, a quen os dous amaban.O protagonista emprende unha viaxe a traves da exuberante selva que ata hai pouco era unha gran cidade, na procura de respostas, e polo camiño iremos descubrindo como a humanidade acadou a sua destrucion durante unha carreira incontrolada de enxeñeria xenetica.Atwood bota man do seu estilo agudo e humor negro para transportarnos a un futuro proximo e ao mesmo tempo afastado da nosa imaxinacion."

Zenia is beautiful, smart and greedy, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless; a man''s dream and a woman s nightmare. She is also dead. Just to make sure Tony, Roz andd Charis are there for the funeral. But five years on, as the three women share an indulgent, sisterly lunch, the unthinkable happens; ''with waves of ill will flowing out of her like cosmic radiation'', Zenia is back...

A young woman returns to northern Quebec to the remote island of her childhood, with her lover and two friends, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her father. Flooded with memories, she begins to realise that going home means entering not only another place but another time. As the wild island exerts its elemental hold and she is submerged in the language of the wilderness, she sees that what she is really looking for is her own past.