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The Robber Bride

by (author) Margaret Atwood

Publisher
Doubleday Canada
Initial publish date
Feb 1999
Subjects
General
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Description

Exploring the paradox of female villainy, this tale of three fascinating women is another peerless display of literary virtuosity by the supremely gifted author of Cat's Eye and The Handmaid's Tale. Roz, Charis and Tony all share a wound, and her name is Zenia. Beautiful, smart and hungry, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless, Zenia is the turbulent center of her own perpetual saga. She entered their lives in the sixties, when they were in college. Over the three decades since, she has damaged each of them badly, ensnaring their sympathy, betraying their trust, and treating their men as loot. Then Zenia dies, or at any rate the three women — with much relief — attend her funeral. But as The Robber Bride begins, Roz, Charis and Tony have come together at a trendy restaraunt for their monthly lunch when in walks the seemingly resurrected Zenia...

In this consistently entertaining and profound new novel, Margaret Atwood reports from the farthest reaches of the war between the sexes with her characteristic well-crafted prose, rich and devious humor, and compassion.

About the author


Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than fifty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, part of the Massey Lecture series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson. 

Margaret Atwood's profile page

Awards

  • Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Awards - Fiction

Editorial Reviews

“Atwood has never written better than in this novel of glittering breadth and dark, eerie depths.”
The Sunday Times (U.K.)
“A remarkable achievement, constantly entertaining and intriguing.”
The Ottawa Citizen

“Deserves every superlative we can muster from hilarious to wise.…A genuine tour de force, witty and original, suspenseful and sagacious.”
Booklist
“Funny, thoughtful, moving…Atwood’s plotting is masterful, and her humor is razor-edged, sexy, and raucous.”
Washington Post

“Nobody maps female psychic territory the way Margaret Atwood does.…What a treasure she is.”
Newsweek

“A hugely enjoyable novel.”
Globe and Mail
“Imaginative and suspenseful…a virtuoso performance.”
Publishers Weekly
“Wickedly funny…witty…well-observed.”
Observer (U.K.)

“Brilliant and entertaining.”
Boston Sunday Globe
“Grabs the funny bone, the brain, and sometimes the throat.”
–Kingston Whig-Standard

“Brilliant and entertaining.”
Ottawa Sun
“Startling, provocative and rewarding.”
Canadian Forum
“Excitements, wit, and insight sizzle across the pages. Atwood’s survey of impulses that bedevil life seethes with imagination, inventiveness and intelligence.”
-Peter Kemp

“Compelling and astonishingly rich…”
Books in Canada

From the Hardcover edition.