Penguin Random House To Publish Margaret Atwood’s Memoir

Penguin Random House has acquired the rights to the renowned Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s memoir and will publish it on November 4 this year in the entire English-speaking world. Entitled “Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts,” the book will be published by McClelland & Stewart in Atwood's native Canada, by Doubleday in the U.S., and by Chatto & Windus in the U.K. The initial print run in the U.S. alone is 350,000 copies.

“I sweated blood over this book,” said Margaret Atwood. “There was too much life to stuff in, and if I’d died at 25 like John Keats, it could have been shorter – but I also laughed a lot. A memoir is what you can remember, and you remember mostly stupid things, catastrophes, revenges, and times of political horror, so I put those in – but I also added moments of joy, and surprising events and, of course, the books. I hope you’ll have as much fun reading ‘Book Of Lives’ as I did writing it.”

“Book Of Lives” tells the story of the author, who became world-famous for her global bestseller ‘The Handmaid's Tale,’ and won the Booker Prize not once but twice: for "The Blind Assassin" and "The Testaments." Raised by ruggedly independent, scientifically minded parents – entomologist father, dietician mother – Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec. From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel year that spawned “Cat’s Eye” to the Orwellian 1980s of East Berlin where she wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale.”