Old Babes in the Wood

Description

INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the Globe and Mail and Indigo

A dazzling collection of fifteen short stories from Margaret Atwood, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments.

Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine—explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood’s characteristic insight, wit and intellect. 

The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love—and what comes after.

Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the Globe and Mail and Indigo

“This is Atwood. This is our four-faced Janus, who’s got one face turned to the past, one to the present, one to the future and the fourth inside a spaceship, telling stories about eating horses. Long may she reign.”
—New York Times

“Old Babes in the Wood is another Margaret Atwood triumph: incisive, insightful, hilarious and utterly readable.”
—Globe and Mail

“Atwood is a literary writer who entirely sees the point of science fiction, and her speculative instincts are on show in several of the stories here.”
—The Guardian

“As eclectic as they come. . . . A gripping read. . . . [Old Babes in the Wood] exhibits Atwood’s sheer imaginative range—imaginative in both the malleability of her language and her seemingly inexhaustible capacity to envision alternative worlds or to see our own aslant. . . . Old Babes in the Wood is further evidence of a writer in full possession of her powers. Atwood will never struggle to find readers, but this collection really is worth their attention.”
—Financial Times

“The Tig and Nell stories rank with the best short fiction Atwood has produced.”
—Toronto Star

“Old Babes in the Wood is touching, smart, funny, and unique in equal measure. . . . A dazzling mixture of stories that explore what it means to be human while also showcasing Atwood’s gifted imagination and great sense of humor.”
—NPR

“Atwood explores love and loss in this brilliant collection that mixes fantastical stories about the afterlife with realism. . . . She’s writing at the top of her considerable powers here.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The celebrated author’s first collection of short fiction since Stone Mattress (2014). . . . Honest and artful depictions of aging and loss.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Vitality and virtuosity have been the hallmarks of Atwoods literary career—and, as Old Babes in the Wood, published in her 84th year, shows, triumphantly continue to be so. . . . Mortality shadows the book. Vivacity makes it shine.”
―Sunday Times

“The Booker winner writes beautifully about ageing and death. . . . The silence after the best stories here is akin to how she describes the aftermath of a calamitous event.”
―The Times

“[A] master class in how to write, a rollicking good time, and a deep exploration of human relationships—the damage we do to each other and the ways we come together. Delving into Atwood’s work feels a bit like coming home”
—Brooklyn Rail

“These stories are sometimes screamingly funny, sometimes wrenchingly sad, but always deeply invigorating. In Old Babes in the Wood, Atwood, zooming along in her prime, revels in her formidable powers.”
—Boston Globe

“This new collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood, delivers unwavering evidence of Atwood’s precise art, exploring a diversity of intensely observed characters and themes, from ancient myth to modern domesticity, with a cool, compassionate eye and occasionally wicked wit. I can’t recall having come across a writer who could capture patterns of practical and theoretical life better than Atwood does here.”
—Canberra TimesMARGARET ATWOOD, whose work has been published in more than forty-five countries, is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, now an award-winning TV series, her novels include The Testaments, winner of the 2019 Booker Prize; Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; The MaddAddam Trilogy; The Heart Goes Last; and Hag-Seed. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the  Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award. In 2019, she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She lives in Toronto.CA

Additional information