by MARGARET ATWOOD

THE BLIND ASSASSIN



Read by: Lorelei King
Running Time: 18 hrs 24 mins
Categories: Science Fiction, Mystery
Released: 2014
Media: mp3 on CD, Unabridged Audio Book
ISBN: 9781486225309

The Author

Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor.

Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction.

Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.


The novel Surfacing (1972) was adapted into an 1981 film, written by Bernard Gordon and directed by Claude Jutra. The film received poor reviews and suffers from making "little attempt to find cinematic equivalents for the admittedly difficult subjective and poetic dimensions of the novel."

The novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985) has been adapted several times. A 1990 film, directed by Volker Schlöndorff, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, received mixed reviews. A musical adaptation resulted in the 2000 opera, written by Poul Ruders, with a libretto by Paul Bentley. It premiered at the Royal Danish Opera in 2000, and was staged in 2003 at London's English National Opera and the Minnesota Opera. Boston Lyric Opera mounted a production in May 2019. A television series by Bruce Miller began airing on the streaming service Hulu in 2017. The first season of the show earned eight Emmys in 2017, including Outstanding Drama Series. Season two premiered on April 25, 2018, and it was announced on May 2, 2018, that Hulu had renewed the series for a third season. Atwood appears in a cameo in the first episode as one of the Aunts at the Red Center. In 2019, a graphic novel based on this book and with the same title was published by Renée Nault.

In 2003, six of Atwood's short stories were adapted by Shaftesbury Films for the anthology television series The Atwood Stories.

Atwood's 2008 Massey Lectures were adapted into the documentary Payback (2012), by director Jennifer Baichwal. Commentary by Atwood and others such as economist Raj Patel, ecologist William Reese, and religious scholar Karen Armstrong, are woven into various stories that explore the concepts of debt and payback, including an Armenian blood feud, agricultural working conditions, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Atwood's works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics". Many of her poems are inspired by myths and fairy tales which interested her from a very early age.

Synopsis

Margaret Atwood takes the art of storytelling to new heights in a dazzling new novel that unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist.

For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge."

They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a- novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms and clichés of the 1930s and 1940s, The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience. The novel has many threads and a series of events that follow one another at a breathtaking pace.

As everything comes together, readers will discover that the story Atwood is telling is not only what it seems to be--but, in fact, much more. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time.

Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic.

Reviews

“With [The Blind Assassin], Ms. Atwood offers added certification to her lofty position in world literature…[It] is marked by lyrical writing and the intricacy of the narrative. The reader is repeatedly caught by surprise…Almost to the last page, the book retains its sense of mystery.” - New York Times

“A literary high-wire act…Big and ambitious…A sweeping family saga.” - Newsweek

“Brilliant…Opulent…Atwood is a poet…as well as a contriver of fiction, and scarcely a sentence of her quick, dry yet avid prose fails to do useful work, adding to a picture that becomes enormous.” - John Updike, New Yorker

“Chilling…Lyrical…[Atwood’s] most ambitious work to date.” - Boston Globe

“The Blind Assassin has enough mysteries to keep even a casual reader engaged…There is a steely quality to Ms. Atwood’s writing that’s a bit scary but also exhilarating; no one gets away with anything.” -
Wall Street Journal

“Assured…A harsh portrait of class warfare and sexual exploitations, a knowing satire of pulp fiction and literary cultism, and an unflinching meditation on the uses of art, all wrapped up with Atwood’s customary aplomb.” - Chicago Sun-Times

On Media

Audiobook on CD-ROM, complete with artwork on the CD. Supplied in windowed CD sleeve, no case or cover provided.

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