The Testaments

Margaret Atwood returns to Gilead with The Testaments, published on September 10, 2019, a sequel to her 1985 classic The Handmaid's Tale. Set roughly fifteen years after the original, the novel is told through the testimonies of three women: Aunt Lydia, the enigmatic architect of Gilead's brutal system; Agnes, a young woman raised within the regime; and Daisy, a Canadian teenager whose past is a lie. Their stories converge in a plot involving infiltration, escape, and the seeds of Gilead's collapse.

Atwood frames the narrative as a collection of historical documents, a device that lets her explore how power shapes memory and truth. Aunt Lydia's sections offer a chilling look at how the regime was built, while Agnes and Daisy's journeys trace the psychological cost of growing up under totalitarianism. The novel is both a page-turning thriller and a meditation on resistance, complicity, and the stories we tell about the past.

Published by Doubleday in the US and Vintage in the UK, the book runs 422 pages and was an immediate bestseller, selling over 100,000 copies in its first week in the UK alone. It went on to share the 2019 Booker Prize with Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other, making Atwood the oldest winner at age 79, and won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fiction. The novel also became the basis for a Hulu television series that premiered in 2026, extending the franchise's cultural footprint. [edit]