The Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood
Bantam Doubleday, 2000

Margaret Atwood's latest novel The Blind Assassin focuses on an octogenarian looking back on the events leading to the death of her younger sister. But the book which recently won Britain's most prestigious literary prize, the Booker, also contains a novel-within-the-novel—and yet another science fiction tale within THAT! One of the Booker judges said the book "demonstrates Atwood's immense emotional range, as well as her poet's eye for both telling detail and psychological truth."

Margaret Atwood's reaction on hearing she had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: "I jumped up and down... I had struggled for months. It had the wrong start. I almost wrote another book and almost abandoned this. But I suddenly got the right person talking."

	© Thies Bogner

About the author
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1939. Much of her childhood was spent in a wood-stove-heated cabin in the Canadian wilderness where her father did entomological research. She began writing at age six.

Although her parents wanted her to be a scientist, she studied writing in Canada and the United States. She has authored more than 25 books, including Alias Grace, Cat's Eye, and The Robber Bride, and the collections Wilderness Tips and Bluebeard's Egg. Her latest novel, The Blind Assassin, won the 2000 Booker Prize. She lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson.

Books by Margaret Atwood
• The Handmaid's Tale (Anchor Books, 1998)
• Cat's Eye (Anchor Books, 1998)
• The Robber Bride (Nan A. Talese, 1993)
• Alias Grace (Nan A. Talese, 1993)
• Wilderness Tips (Bantam Doubleday, 1996)
• Bluebeard's Egg (Anchor Books, 1998)