Margaret Atwood is the winner of the 2020 Dayton Literary Peace Prize's lifetime achievement award. Some readers of The Handmaid's Tale saw in the leaders of authoritarian Gilead similarities to the rise of Republican Donald Trump to president in the 2016 election. Author Margaret Atwood talks to Adrienne Arsenault about the catalysts for The Testaments, the loss of her husband, a top-secret project and turning 80. Atwood thinks an American defiant streak is the country's defense against the kind of nightmarish totalitarian future she depicts for the United States in The Handmaid's Tale. The Testaments, her 2019 sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, quickly joined her other bestsellers.

Source: CBC News September 14, 2020 15:45 UTC