In Homer’s account in The Odyssey, Penelope - wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy - is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan war after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumours, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and - curiously - twelve of her maids.
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In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged Maids, asking: "What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?" In Atwood’s dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing. With wit and verve, drawing on the storytelling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, she gives Penelope new life and reality - and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery.

The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura?s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin , it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

The internationally acclaimed Myths series brings together some of the finest writers of our time to provide a contemporary take on some of our most enduring stories. Here, the timeless and universal tales that reflect and shape our lives–mirroring our fears and desires, helping us make sense of the world–are revisited, updated, and made new.
Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad is a sharp, brilliant and tender revision of a story at the heart of our culture: the myths about Penelope and Odysseus. In Homer’s familiar version, The Odyssey, Penelope is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes to fight in the Trojan Wars, she manages to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son and, in the face of scandalous rumours, keep over a hundred suitors at bay. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters and sleeping with goddesses, he kills Penelope’s suitors and–curiously–twelve of her maids.
In Homer the hanging of the maids merits only a fleeting though poignant mention, but Atwood comments in her introduction that she has always been haunted by those deaths. The Penelopiad, she adds, begins with two questions: what led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? In the book, these subjects are explored by Penelope herself–telling the story from Hades — the Greek afterworld - in wry, sometimes acid tones. But Penelope’s maids also figure as a singing and dancing chorus (and chorus line), commenting on the action in poems, songs, an anthropology lecture and even a videotaped trial.
The Penelopiad does several dazzling things at once. First, it delves into a moment of casual brutality and reveals all that the act contains: a practice of sexual violence and gender prejudice our society has not outgrown. But it is also a daring interrogation of Homer’s poem, and its counter-narratives — which draw on mythic material not used by Homer - cleverly unbalance the original. This is the case throughout, from the unsettling questions that drive Penelope’s tale forward, to more comic doubts about some of The Odyssey’s most famous episodes. (“Odysseus had been in a fight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, said some; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern keeper, said another, and the fight was over non-payment of the bill.”)
In fact, The Penelopiad weaves and unweaves the texture of The Odyssey in several searching ways. The Odyssey was originally a set of songs, for example; the new version’s ballads and idylls complement and clash with the original. Thinking more about theme, the maids’ voices add a new and unsettling complex of emotions that is missing from Homer. The Penelopiad takes what was marginal and brings it to the centre, where one can see its full complexity.
The same goes for its heroine. Penelope is an important figure in our literary culture, but we have seldom heard her speak for herself. Her sometimes scathing comments in The Penelopiad (about her cousin, Helen of Troy, for example) make us think of Penelope differently – and the way she talks about the twenty-first century, which she observes from Hades, makes us see ourselves anew too.
Margaret Atwood is an astonishing storyteller, and The Penelopiad is, most of all, a haunting and deeply entertaining story. This book plumbs murder and memory, guilt and deceit, in a wise and passionate manner. At time hilarious and at times deeply thought-provoking, it is very much a Myth for our times.

Margaret Atwood puts the human heart to the ultimate test in an utterly brilliant new novel that is as visionary as The Handmaid's Tale and as richly imagined as The Blind Assassin.
Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around—and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. Once their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their "civilian" homes.
At first, this doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have a roof over one's head and food to eat. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan's life in danger. With each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled.

Living in their car, surviving on tips, Charmaine and Stan are in a desperate state. So, when they see an advertisement for Consilience, a 'social experiment' offering stable jobs and a home of their own, they sign up immediately. All they have to do in return for suburban paradise is give up their freedom every second month – swapping their home for a prison cell. At first, all is well. But then, unknown to each other, Stan and Charmaine develop passionate obsessions with their 'Alternates,' the couple that occupy their house when they are in prison. Soon the pressures of conformity, mistrust, guilt and sexual desire begin to take over.
“One of the most important writers in English today” – Germaine Greer
“Margaret Atwood is the quiet Mata Hari, the mysterious, violent figure … who pits herself against the ordered, too clean world like an arsonist” – Michael Ondaatje
“It's easy to appreciate the grand array of Margaret Atwood's works … in all their power and grace and variety. When I think of it, and put it together with her writerly gifts and achievements, it takes my breath away” – Alice Munro
“Atwood is a poet. Scarcely a sentence of her quick, dry yet avid prose fails to do useful work” – John Updike

這是我雙重生活的開端。但我不是始終過著雙重生活嗎？我那朦朧的雙胞胎在我肥胖時瘦削，在我瘦削時肥胖，就像是銀色底片上的我，黑色的牙齒，白色的瞳仁在另一個世界的黑色陽光下閃閃發亮，而我則袖手旁觀，禁錮在肉體中面對日常生活中無趣的灰塵和永遠沒有清空的菸灰缸。那是我那個莽撞雙胞胎想要的夢幻國度。其實也不能叫雙胞胎，因為我不止兩個，我是三胞胎，多胞胎，而現在我看見不止一個新生活的到來，而是許多個新生。
從胖到瘦，從紅髮到泥褐色髮，從倫敦到多倫多……羅曼史小說家瓊，終其一生都在逃避。小時候因為體重過重，不斷被母親批評，從此她便以暴食抗議，「胖」這個字如影隨形。為了得到姑姑的遺產，遺囑中規定瓊必須減肥一百磅。變瘦後，拿到遺產，也決定離家重新做人，並虛構她的過往。
瓊到了倫敦不久後，邂逅波蘭伯爵，成為他的情婦，並發現自己的文采，開始以姑姑的名字為筆名，寫作羅曼史。後來她與政治狂熱份子亞瑟結婚，但是卻瞞著羅曼史小說作家的身分，後又與藝術家「皇家刺蝟」發展地下情。她寫作遇到瓶頸，使用通靈者的自動書寫方式結集的新詩集《女祭司》意外成為暢銷書，因此一舉成名。
瓊一生都在為生活中的多重身份所苦，她接獲黑函，要揭穿她肥胖的過往。瓊決定在義大利山城開始新的人生。但首先，她必須安排自己的死亡……。

In Alias Grace, bestselling author Margaret Atwood has written her most captivating, disturbing, and ultimately satisfying work since The Handmaid's Tale. She takes us back in time and into the life of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century.
Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders.
Dr. Simon Jordan, an up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness, is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Is Grace a female fiend? A bloodthirsty femme fatale? Or is she the victim of circumstances?

The evolution of Margaret Atwood's poetry illuminates one of our major literary talents. Here, as in her novels, is intensity combined with sardonic detachment, and in these early poems her genius for a level stare at the ordinary is wonderfully apparent. Just as startling is her ability to contrast the everyday with the terrifying: 'Each time I hit a key/ on my electric typewriter/ speaking of peaceful trees/ another village explodes.' Her poetic voice is crystal clear, insistent, unmistakably her own. Through bus trips and postcards, wilderness and trivia, she reflects the passion and energy of a writer intensely engaged with her craft and the world. Two former collections, Poems 1965 - 1975 and Poems 1976 - 1986, are presented together with her latest collection, Morning in the Burned House, in this omnibus that represents the development of a major poet.

Bringing together Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, this thrilling conclusion to Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction trilogy points toward the ultimate endurance of community, and love.
Months after the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Toby and Ren have rescued their friend Amanda from the vicious Painballers. They return to the MaddAddamite cob house, newly fortified against man and giant pigoon alike. Accompanying them are the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human species engineered by the brilliant but deceased Crake. Their reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is recovering from a debilitating fever, so it's left to Toby to preach the Craker theology, with Crake as Creator. She must also deal with cultural misunderstandings, terrible coffee, and her jealousy over her lover, Zeb.
Zeb has been searching for Adam One, founder of the God's Gardeners, the pacifist green religion from which Zeb broke years ago to lead the MaddAddamites in active resistance against the destructive CorpSeCorps. But now, under threat of a Painballer attack, the MaddAddamites must fight back with the aid of their newfound allies, some of whom have four trotters. At the center of MaddAddam is the story of Zeb's dark and twisted past, which contains a lost brother, a hidden murder, a bear, and a bizarre act of revenge.
Combining adventure, humor, romance, superb storytelling, and an imagination at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Margaret Atwood—a moving and dramatic conclusion to her internationally celebrated dystopian trilogy.

'Atwood entices us to flip through the photo album of a Canadian woman who closely resembles herself. Come here, sit beside me, she seems to say. Then she takes us on an emotional journey through loneliness, love, loss and old age' Sarah Emily Miano, THE TIMES Short stories that trace the course of a life, and the lives intertwined with it - MORAL DISORDER is Margaret Atwood at her very finest. 'Funny, touching, beady-eyed, slouchily elegant, giving us family life in all its horrors. The secret resentments and alignments - difficult siblings, unfair parents, hopeless yearnings and rage ? are funny to read about, hellish to experience. Atwood makes it look so easy, doing what she does best: tenderly dissecting the human heart ...A marvellous writer' Lee Langley, DAILY MAIL 'A model of distillation, precision, clarity and detail ...Atwood writes with compassion and intensity not only about her characters but also about the 20th century itself' Mary Flanagan, INDEPENDENT 'MORAL DISORDER is an infinitely ingenious and perceptive study, as intimate as a self-portrait but with an epic breadth of vision. It deserves to become a quiet classic' Charlotte Moore, SPECTATOR

Joan Foster is the bored wife of a myopic ban-the-bomber. She takes off overnight as Canada's new superpoet, pens lurid gothics on the sly, attracts a blackmailing reporter, skids cheerfully in and out of menacing plots, hair-raising traps, and passionate trysts, and lands dead and well in Terremoto, Italy. In this remarkable, poetic, and magical novel, Margaret Atwood proves yet again why she is considered to be one of the most important and accomplished writers of our time.

What do we mean when we say that someone is a writer? Is he or she an entertainer? A high priest of the god Art? An improver of readers’ minds and morals? And who, for that matter, are these mysterious readers? In this wise and irresistibly quotable book, one of the most intelligent writers now working in English addresses the riddle of her art: why people pursue it, how they view their calling, and what bargains they make with their audience, both real and imagined.
To these fascinating issues Margaret Atwood brings a candid appraisal of her own experience as well as a breadth of reading that encompasses everything from Dante to Elmore Leonard. An ambitious artistic inquiry conducted with unpretentiousness and charm, Negotiating with the Dead is an unprecedented insider’s view of the writer’s universe.

◎亞馬遜網路書店評鑑五顆星
◎諾貝爾文學獎呼聲最高的女性作家
◎廿一世紀高寓言式的瘟疫文學作品
◎2003年布克獎、橘子獎提名
◎知名學者 南方朔 導讀推薦
英國布克獎《盲眼刺客》作者，亦是諾貝爾文學獎呼聲最高的作家瑪格麗特‧愛特伍，繼《使女的故事》之後再度挑釁讀者的神經，描述人類遭受病毒感染、基因改造後的廢墟世界。
小說一開始，敘述者引領讀者進入劫難後的荒涼世界：滿地生鏽的機器、殘破的沙灘、悲悽的鳥鳴以及遠方的浪濤聲。「雪人」是唯一的倖存者，此外是一群赤裸、完美、天真，有著綠眼睛、經過基因改造的「克雷科人」。
大劫前的世界是基因工程宰制的世界，人類製造無數的異種：沒有大腦只有肥大器官的「器官豬」、外表和善實際陰險凶狠的「狗狼」、蜘蛛和山羊基因重組的「蛛羊」......
《末世男女》是科技反烏托邦的瘟疫文學，預言生物科技和病毒變種將造成的人類浩劫。瑪格麗特以詩人敏銳的筆調，書寫人性；令人毛骨悚然、怵目驚心，瀰漫著悽涼的美學。

沒有比理解已逝的人更困難的事了；但也沒有比忽略他們更危險的了……

一樁離奇的車禍，揭發了一段隱藏多年的秘密！蘿拉到底是死於自殺還是意外？事隔數十年，艾莉絲用黑色幽默的語調，述說她與丈夫、情人以及妹妹之間糾纏不清的感情糾葛；掀起一個又一個驚人內幕！

蘿拉死後兩年，經由艾莉絲整理出版了一本署名為蘿拉的小說《盲眼刺客》，描寫一個遭警察全力緝捕的左翼分子，為取悅幽會的女孩，如同《一千零一夜》裡逃避死亡的主角，一次次編造辛克龍星球的奇幻故事。故事中暗藏洶湧的愛情、背叛與死亡。

雙線並行，劇中劇的結構，輕鬆易讀的句子，展現瑪格麗特龐大的寫作企圖。是愛讀小說的人不可不讀的佳作！本書極力挑戰讀者的想像空間，不僅讓人感嘆作者驚人的想像力；而故事高潮起伏、引人入勝的情節，更讓讀者不忍釋手，無法停止閱讀。

In this extraordinary collection, Margaret Atwood gives us nine unforgettable tales that reveal the grotesque, delightfully wicked facets of humanity. “Alphinland,” the first of three loosely linked tales, introduces us to a fantasy writer who is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. In “Lusus Naturae,” a young woman, monstrously transformed by a genetic defect, is mistaken for a vampire. And in the title story, a woman who has killed four husbands discovers an opportunity to exact vengeance on the first man who ever wronged her.
By turns thrilling, funny, and thought-provoking, Stone Mattress affirms Atwood as our greatest creator of worlds—and as an incisive chronicler of our darkest impulses.

Margaret Atwood’s latest brilliant collection of short stories follows the life of a single character, seen as a girl growing up the 1930s, a young woman in the 50s and 60s, and, in the present day, half of a couple, no longer young, reflecting on the new state of the world. Each story focuses on the ways relationships transform a character’s life: a woman’s complex love for a married man, the grief upon the death of parents and the joy with the birth of children, the realization of what growing old with someone you love really means. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood’s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage.

基列共和國裡，男女階級分明，父權主宰了這個社會的一切。女人被嚴苛的控制著，無法有自主的工作，不能擁有財產，依照剩餘價值被分配擔任不同職務。

「使女」是其一，她們沒有名字，不能閱讀、與人交談，被剝奪情與慾，絕不容許隱密的慾望之花有盛開之機；只是長著兩條腿的子宮，職司和社會領導者大主教交合，以便繁衍下一代。

本書記錄了一名在基列共和國時期擔任「使女」的心情故事。她馴服在權威體制裡，心靈卻自有主張，一步步挑戰禁忌......記錄的年代久遠不可考，但情節之荒誕駭人，卻熟悉莫名地叫人心驚。

這本題材及技巧上都十分「後現代」的作品，作者發揮想像力之極致，掌握時間的線性流動，是過去也是未來。細膩、深刻，在迷人的敘述中反覆辯證人與女人的價值，真實與虛構拉扯，挑戰讀者的閱讀神經。極具藝術性、思想性及可讀性。

《使女的故事》是歐美文學界推崇不已的作品，也是瑪格麗特最廣受討論之書，已被列入重要經典作品中。各大學也都有專門學者及課程研討此書。