Lady Oracle

Lady Oracle

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments— the "brilliant and funny" story (Joan Didion, bestselling author of Let Me Tell You What I Mean ) of a woman whose attempts to escape herself become instead an occasion for confronting the self-deception that has driven her since childhood Joan Foster is a woman with numerous identities and a talent for shedding them at will. She has written trashy gothic romances, had affairs with a Polish count and an absurd avant-garde artist, and played at being a politically engaged partner to her activist husband. After a volume of her poetry becomes an unexpected literary sensation, her new fame attracts a blackmailer threatening to reveal her secrets. Joan’s response is to fake her own death and flee to a hill town in Italy.  Studded with hair-raising comic escapades and piercing psychological insights, Lady Oracle is both hilarious and profound. “A rich, subtle, deep, delicate, nourishing book. It’s all joy, but it stays with you. She has things to tell us.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer “Brilliant and funny. I can’t tell you how exhilarating it was to read it—everything works. An extraordinary book.” —Joan Didion “A very funny novel, lightly told with wry detachment and considerable art.” — The Washington Post Book World "Funny, poignant, and briskly energetic."  --Newsweek New in this edition: a Reader's Companion to Lady Oracle --ideal for discussion groups "Funny, poignant, and briskly energetic." --Newsweek "A rich, subtle, deep, delicate, nourishing book. It's all joy, but it stays with you. She has things to tell us." --Philadelphia Inquirer "A really gifted writer...alternately satirical and lyrical." --Time "A very funny novel, lightly told with wry detachment and considerable art." --Washington Post Book World "Brilliant and funny. I can't tell you how exhilarating it was to read it --everything works. An extraordinary book." --Joan Didion Joan Foster is the bored wife of a myopic ban-the-bomber.  She takes off overnight as Canada's new superpoet, pens lurid gothics on the sly, attracts a blackmailing reporter, skids cheerfully in and out of menacing plots, hair-raising traps, and passionate trysts, and lands dead and well in Terremoto, Italy.  In this remarkable, poetic, and magical novel, Margaret Atwood proves yet again why she is considered to be one of the most important and accomplished writers of our time. Joan Foster is the bored wife of a myopic ban-the-bomber. She takes off overnight as Canada's new superpoet, pens lurid gothics on the sly, attracts a blackmailing reporter, skids cheerfully in and out of menacing plots, hair-raising traps, and passionate trysts, and lands dead and well in Terremoto, Italy. In this remarkable, poetic, and magical novel, Margaret Atwood proves yet again why she is considered to be one of the most important and accomplished writers of our time. Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade.   Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.