Her novels include The Handmaid’s Tale and Cat’s Eye-both shortlisted for the Booker Prize The Robber Bride, winner of the Trillium Book Award and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award Alias Grace, winner of the prestigious Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy, and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize and a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and Oryx and Crake, a finalist for The Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Orange Prize, and the Man Booker Prize. Atwood’s work is acclaimed internationally and has been published around the world. She is the author of more than forty books - novels, short stories, poetry, literary criticism, social history, and books for children. She has lived in numerous cities in Canada, the U.S., and Europe.

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939, and grew up in northern Quebec and Ontario, and later in Toronto. In love and war, illusion and deceit, Zenia’s subterranean malevolence takes us deep into her enemies’ pasts.

To Tony, who almost lost her husband and jeopardized her academic career, Zenia is ‘a lurking enemy commando.’ To Roz, who did lose her husband and almost her magazine, Zenia is ‘a cold and treacherous bitch.’ To Charis, who lost a boyfriend, quarts of vegetable juice and some pet chickens, Zenia is a kind of zombie, maybe ‘soulless'” (Lorrie Moore, New York Times Book Review). At various times, and in various emotional disguises, Zenia has insinuated her way into their lives and practically demolished them. All three “have lost men, spirit, money, and time to their old college acquaintance, Zenia. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends, Tony, Charis, and Roz. Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride is inspired by “The Robber Bridegroom,” a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one.

The robber bride by margaret atwood