![]() No regime lasts forever – a point already hopefully made in the postscript of The Handmaid’s Tale – and The Testaments looks at how the first blows may be struck from within. It is an addictively readable, fast-paced adventure about the collapse of Gilead, a totalitarian Christian state formed in a dystopian America, when falling fertility rates are countered via the sexual enslavement of women (the handmaids). It cannot fully live up to all of that, but it can and does satisfy our hunger for more. ![]() ![]() As well as all that hype, there’s the genuine brilliance of its predecessor, which has become a touchstone in the age of Trump, and a hugely popular TV series. So The Testaments has a lot to live up to. In doing so, it broke one of the strictest book embargoes ever – The Testaments has been under Gilead-style surveillance, and possibly with good reason: the publishers have apparently been subject to cyberattacks. Waterstones has a countdown clock to publication on its website – somewhat undermined by Amazon accidentally sending out a first batch early. Bookshops are staying open to midnight on release day. It’s already shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Thirty-four years after her seminal novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has published a sequel. You don’t need me to tell you that this is the “literary event of the year”. ![]()
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