New Delhi: In a press release on Wednesday, Margaret Atwood, author of bestselling dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, revealed that she will be releasing a sequel titled The Testaments in September 2019.
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
In the release, Atwood writes “Dear Readers, everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”
The Handmaid’s Tale follows Offred, one of the many “handmaids” or women stripped of their identities and made to live as sexual slaves to the ruling class of men. The women cannot read or write and are used primarily as reproductive units. Set in a dystopian US, this vision has chilling echoes in the curbing of women’s reproductive autonomy and muzzling women’s voices by the current US government.
In a piece for LitHub, Atwood writes:
“The Handmaid’s Tale has not been out of print since it was first published, back in 1985. It has sold millions of copies worldwide and has appeared in a bewildering number of translations and editions. It has become a sort of tag for those writing about shifts towards policies aimed at controlling women, and especially women’s bodies and reproductive functions.”
A television adaptation with the same name has also been widely successful, leading to the use of the handmaids’ red and white robes as costume of choice at pro-choice rallies in Argentina and Ireland, and at the September hearings for US supreme court judge Brett Kavanaugh, after he was accused of sexual assault.
In this political climate, fans are keenly waiting the sequel’s release. A report in The Guardian quotes Becky Hardie, deputy publishing director at Chatto & Windus, saying “As a society, we’ve never needed Margaret Atwood more. The moment the van door slams on Offred’s future at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the most brilliantly ambiguous endings in literature. I cannot wait to find out what’s been going on in Atwood’s Gilead – and what that might tell us about our own times.”
Fans have also taken to Twitter to express their enthusiasm about The Testaments’ release:
I am not ready for a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale but also @MargaretAtwood I am SO READY.
— Catriona Wightman (@catrionaw890) November 28, 2018
I read Handmaid’s Tale over a decade ago as a high schooler and it has haunted me ever since — This is so exciting! Congratulations and thank you, Ma’am!
— Mia Marci (@miithinks) November 28, 2018