
"'Survival' is the most startling book ever written about Canadian literature. It is ... a book of criticism, a manifesto, and a collection of personal and subversive remarks. Margaret Atwood begins by asking: 'what have been the central preoccupations of our poetry and fiction?' Her answer is twofold: 'survival and victims.' Atwood applies this thesis in twelve brilliant, witty and impassioned chapters. From Moodie to MacLennan to Blais, from Pratt to Purdy to Newlove, from Godfrey to Gibson, she lights up familiar books in wholly new perspectives." The themes are: survival; nature the monster; animal victims; early people (indians and eskimos); ancestral totems (explorers and settlers); family portrait: masks of the bear; failed sacrifices (the reluctant immigrant); the casual incident of death; the paralyzed artist; ice women vs. earth mothers; Quebec: burning mansions; and, jail-breaks and recreations.
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Born 1939
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, OC is a Canadian writer. A prolific poet, novelist, literary critic, feminist and activist, she has received national and international recognition for her writing. ATWOOD, whose work has been published in over forty countries, is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid's Tale, now a successful MGM-Hulu television series currently preparing its fourth season, her novels include Cat's Eye, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize; The Penelopiad; The Heart Goes Last; Hag-seed; and The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, published in September, 2019. She lives in Toronto some of the time.
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