Best Margaret Atwood books: from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ to ‘Alias Grace’

Since her debut onto the literary scene in 1961, Margaret Atwood has become one of the most internationally popular and lauded authors.

Following a series of poetry collections throughout the Sixties, the Canadian author published her first novel, The Edible Woman, in 1969 – an early example of the feminist themes threading through her stories and poems.

By 1976, there was such a buzz around the works of Atwood that one magazine announced her to be “Canada’s most gossiped-about writer”.

Owing to the success of the 2017 screen adaption of her dystopian, feminist novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood has reached an even wider audience in recent years.

Published in 1985, her arguably most famous tome was a finalist for the Booker Prize and its sequel The Testaments, published in 2019, was a joint winner of the coveted award – shared with Bernardine Evaristo.

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Winning numerous other awards over the years, her novels and poetry explore the intersecting themes of gender, politics, violence and climate change – often through a dystopian lens.

With an impressive 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nine collections of short stories, eight children’s books and two graphic novels in her back catalogue, we’ve whittled it down to a select few of the best.

So whether you’re completely unfamiliar with Atwood or want to delve a bit deeper, these are the books to add your reading pile.

These best Margaret Atwood books are: