The Testaments

Margaret Atwood's The Testaments (2019) is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, set roughly fifteen years after Offred's story ends, as the Republic of Gilead begins to show signs of internal strain. The narrative moves through three voices: Aunt Lydia, one of the founding architects of the regime's control over women, writing in secret from within Ardua Hall; Agnes Jemima, a Commander's daughter raised inside Gilead's indoctrination; and Daisy, a teenager in Canada who gradually discovers her own connection to the regime. Where The Handmaid's Tale kept its focus tightly on a single Handmaid's claustrophobic existence, The Testaments opens the frame outward, tracing how authoritarian systems corrupt from within and what it takes to bring them down. Aunt Lydia in particular is a striking addition to Atwood's Gilead, a true believer turned careful saboteur whose account complicates any simple reading of complicity and survival. The Testaments was the joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize.

Signed copy. First Canadian edition, issued simultaneously with the American edition. Signed by Atwood on a special page bound in by the publisher.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, bound in blue cloth covered boards. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2019. Booker Prize winner (2019). ISBN: 9781773936291. #10019.
Fine in fine dust jacket.