Margaret Atwood is writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Queue the internet to blow up.
Entitled The Testaments, the sequel will be narrated by three female characters and will be set 15 years after the last scene in The Handmaid’s Tale—after the van door slams on Offred and she is driven off to an uncertain future. Freedom? Continued torture? Death? We don’t know!
Pair this announcement with the fact that the Hulu original series featuring Elisabeth Moss and a whole crew of other wonderful actors is about to go off-book in Season 3 (not to mention the perilous political times in which we live)—and you know this is all people will be talking about in 2019!
Check out the cover for The Testaments here!
Here is the Front Cover for #thetestaments … The Back Cover will follow shortly… pic.twitter.com/Mj8JQuRgBO
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) January 31, 2019
Here is what Margaret Atwood had to say about the book: “Dear Readers: Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”
Yes indeed to those who asked: I’m writing a sequel to The #HandmaidsTale. #TheTestaments is set 15 years after Offred’s final scene and is narrated by three female characters. It will be published in Sept 2019. More details: https://t.co/e1umh5FwpX pic.twitter.com/pePp0zpuif
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) November 28, 2018
UPDATE 9/4/19: We just got word that Hulu has acquired the rights for The Testament! MGM and Hulu are discussing how the story of the new book can become an extension to The Handmaid’s Tale with the current showrunner, Bruce Miller.
This post was originally published on GetLiterary.com.