Game-changing author Margaret Atwood has announced a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, saying the follow-up to her cornerstone of dystopian literature will arrive in September 2019.
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Taking to Twitter, Atwood revealed The Testaments will take place 15 years after the events of her 1985 masterpiece and will be narrated by three female leads.
Atwood said The Testaments will delve deeper into the oppressive world of Gilead, her scathing take on The United States as a fundamentalist hellhole.
“Dear Readers, everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book,” Atwood said.
“Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”
Yes indeed to those who asked: I’m writing a sequel to The #HandmaidsTale. #TheTestaments is set 15 years after Offred’s final scene and is narrated by three female characters. It will be published in Sept 2019. More details: https://t.co/e1umh5FwpX pic.twitter.com/pePp0zpuif
— Margaret E Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) November 28, 2018
It’s not yet known if The Testaments will carry on the story of Offred, who – spoiler alert – was last seen being carted off in a van by so-called rebels against Gilead’s system of indentured sexual servitude.
However, it seems unlikely that The Testaments will mirror the plotline of the award-winning The Handmaid’s Tale television series, which is produced by Hulu and beamed onto Aussie screens by SBS.
Both the original novel and the TV series have found immense popularity in recent years, largely due to the fact that an admitted sexual harasser is currently the President of the United States of America.
In a press release obtained by the BBC, the original novel was hailed as “a symbol of the movement against [Donald Trump], standing for female empowerment and resistance in the face of misogyny and the rolling back of women’s rights around the world.”
