Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts (Signed Book)

by Margaret Atwood

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

An icon of literary achievement and author of eerily prophetic writing finally tells us about herself. It’s pretty much a superhero origin story, told in vibrant detail, making it a shining feat of storytelling on its own merit.

How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures.

'Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes. Though everything written must have passed through their minds, or mind, they are not the same.'

Raised by ruggedly independent, scientifically minded parents — entomologist father, dietician mother — Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec. This childhood was unfettered and nomadic, sometimes isolated (on her eighth birthday: 'It sounds forlorn. It was forlorn. It gets more forlorn.'), but also thrilling and beautiful.

From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel year that spawned Cat's Eye to the Orwellian 1980s of East Berlin where she wrote The Handmaid's Tale. In pages bursting with bohemian gatherings, her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and major political turning points, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood actors and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.

As we travel with her along the course of her life, more and more is revealed about her writing, the connections between real life and art — and the workings of one of our greatest imaginations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385552042
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/04/2025
Edition description:	Signed Edition
Pages:	608
Sales rank:	12,393
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.56(d)

About the Author

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid's Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize.

Hometown:

Toronto, Ontario

Date of Birth:

November 18, 1939

Place of Birth:

Ottawa, Ontario

Education:

B.A., University of Toronto, 1961; M.A. Radcliffe, 1962; Ph.D., Harvard University, 1967

Website:

http://www.owtoad.com