Oryx and Crake is written entirely from the perspective of Jimmy, a disenfranchised young man who is deeply unlikeable, especially in how he treats his various girlfriends. On paper this could be seen as aggravating. Instead she focuses on the characters, and you see everything from their close points of view. If you’re looking for an in-depth dystopia, then you won’t receive one here as this isn’t Atwood’s focus.

Genetic manipulation, vegan cults, a worldwide plague that wipes out humanity – it’s all close to reality, which keeps it engaging even when everything is named differently.Ītwood’s writing is so good and so engagingly written that you can’t help but be swept up in it It is ‘speculative fiction.’ Everything in MaddAddam feels like it could happen. If anyone wonders why Atwood refuses to call her work science fiction, it is because she considers her work to be plausible rather than theoretical. That work is, of course, the MaddAddam trilogy.Ĭomprised of Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam, this series of ‘biopunk’ novels are set in a world of environmental collapse and disassociated youth, run by deceptive corporations.

And while The Handmaid’s Tale is still relevant, recent events have made another one of her works eerily prophetic and just as relevant as her feminist masterpiece. It was the perfect book for the #MeToo era and introduced many readers to Atwood for the first time. Women dressed as handmaids during anti-Trump and women’s protests. It had a successful TV show that encouraged Atwood to return to Gilead in 2019, with her follow-up novel The Testaments. In 2017, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was the most relevant dystopian novel in the public consciousness.

Maddaddam trilogy