The long-awaited memoirs of one of our most praised and influential cultural figures.
How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life?
Dive into Margaret Atwood’s creative universe: a celebration of life, art, and everything that connects them. The greatest writer of our time tells her story.
Raised by scientifically minded and independent-spirited parents, Margaret Atwood spent much of her childhood in the remote forests of northern Quebec, far from social conventions. That nomadic and unbound childhood marked the beginning of an extraordinary path, which she narrates with clarity, irony, and wit, weaving together the decisive moments of her life with the works that have transformed contemporary narrative, such as Cat’s Eye and The Handmaid’s Tale. Poets, actors, bears, bohemian figures, and almost supernatural characters parade by, seeming to come straight from her fictions. With her characteristic sharpness and keen insight, Atwood reveals the delicate ties between experience and creation, and between reality and the written word. She also opens an intimate window into her relationship with the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and the emotional landscapes that nourished her writing.
Luminous, revealing, and deeply human, The Book of My Lives is not only the chronicle of a unique journey but also a sharp reflection on what it means to write, remember, and transform experience into literature. A fascinating testimony from one of the most influential voices of our time.
“Margaret Atwood has titled her eagerly awaited memoir The Book of My Lives because that is exactly what it is: the engaging, generous, and good-humored account of the lives that fate gave to someone always ready to downplay herself: from a wild childhood to a wandering youth; from awakening as the poet recently awarded the Joan Margarit International Prize to the recognition as a novelist; and from maturity as the prophetic author of The Handmaid’s Tale to the years of widowhood after the 2019 death of her second husband, Graeme Gibson, companion for almost a lifetime and father of her daughter. The book is also the story of a lost time: the history of the postwar generation and the evolution of customs in the second half of the 20th century, the triumphs and tribulations of feminism, and those Canadian letters that emerged, thanks to her and her contemporaries, from the hegemonic shadow of the United States.” – Iker Seisdedos, El País
