Why it took Margaret Atwood 30 years to find the right voice for a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale

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Margaret Atwood didn't want to write a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, because she thought it would fail.

Atwood first had the idea for the highly anticipated sequel around 2015, although even then she was unsure whether she should write it."And I wrote a note to my publishers in February of 2017 saying, this is the book."

The Testaments is narrated by Aunt Lydia — for those unfamiliar with The Handmaid's Tale, Aunt Lydia is the ruthless instructor who indoctrinates handmaids into Gilead's new world order. It portrays her as more of a complex character, whilst also providing answers to Gilead's creation and its eventual demise.

In The Handmaid's Tale there wasn't a backstory about Aunt Lydia's life before she became a foundational member of the new society."In The Testaments I was interested in a couple of things; how she got that way and also how regimes crumble, how regimes fall apart.""I have to say that the performance of Ann Dowd really, really enriched the concept of character. Anne Dowd in the series made her a much more well-rounded character.

 

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