Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood

Raised in the wild forests of northern Quebec by scientifically minded parents, Margaret Atwood spent much of her childhood in a world of trees, insects and silence—a vast, unfettered playground for her entomologist father and fiercely resourceful mother. It was a nomadic and sometimes isolated upbringing, but also thrilling and beautiful, and it set the imaginative foundations for one of the most remarkable literary careers of our age. From these early years, Atwood began to understand that every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes.

In Book of Lives, Atwood unfolds the story of her life by tracing the intricate connections between lived experience and the books that have shaped our literary landscape. A cruel school year becomes the seed of Cat's Eye; the unease of 1980s Berlin gives rise to The Handmaid's Tale. Along the way, the pages teem with the natural world, with reading and books, with major political turning points and with her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson. We meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars and larger-than-life figures who could have stepped straight from an Atwood novel, as she reflects on how real life and art continually refract one another. As Ali Smith puts it, Atwood has “taken our times and made us wise to them”; here, in an expansive, intimate memoir “of sorts”, she invites readers inside the workings of one of our boldest imaginations.

Publisher: Chatto & Windus

Date Published: 04/11/2025

ISBN: 9781784744496

Number of pages: 752

Binding:

• Paperback

Book genres:

• Biography
• Literature
• Education

Target audience:

• Adults