If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.
Margaret Atwood didn’t feel like The Handmaid’s Tale needed a sequel, but US President Donald Trump changed her mind and inspired The Testaments - here's how
Margaret Atwood had no plans to write The Testaments, but Trump’s presidency changed her mind
Popverse's top stories
- Despite good reviews, Thunderbolts* continues Marvel Studios losing streak at the box office
- MEMBERS ONLY: The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime [Popverse Jump]
- The Coldest Open: Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th is un-campy camp horror with a killer score
In 1985 Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale. The novel described a dystopian future where the United States had become a country ruled by religious fascism and women had lost most of their rights. For years Atwood had said there would be no sequel, preferring to let the novel speak for itself. However, in 2019 Atwood wrote a sequel called The Testaments. What changed? In a word, the country.
“In the 1980s, Handmaid’s Tale appears. This movement to take over the United States with a religious totalitarianism was just taking off. So, I felt that I had put everything into the book, that’s it, make of it as you will, but I don’t need to write a sequel telling you what happened,” Margaret Atwood said during an appearance on Idaho Public Television’s Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference.
“Time moves on, we’re now in 2016, and this movement has become quite strong, and who gets elected. We have a right-wing person being elected, who would not be averse to knocking out the constitution and getting rid of the power of Congress and taking over the Supreme Court, which is what you need to have if you’re going to have an effective authoritarian dictatorship. That’s what you need. You need to have no real opposition, and you need to have no separate judiciary. The will of judiciary has to be as one with yours. If you watch Stalin’s show trials, you can see that in operation.”
“At that point, I felt that I had to go back and revisit it and look at how such a regime might collapse.”
The Testaments was published in 2019. Whether it remains in the fiction section or becomes a reality depends on what our country does next.
Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:
Follow Popverse for upcoming event coverage and news
Find out how we conduct our review by reading our review policy
Let Popverse be your tour guide through the wilderness of pop culture
Sign in and let us help you find your new favorite thing.
Comments
Want to join the discussion? Please activate your account first.
Visit Reedpop ID if you need to resend the confirmation email.