Margaret Atwood has revealed the cover of her follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale and joked that the novel would be set in Ireland.
The Canadian author announced the much-awaited sequel to her dystopian work in November, saying its inspiration was the “world we’ve been living in”.
Atwood’s new novel, entitled The Testaments, will be set in the same fictional universe as The Handmaid’s Tale, which achieved enormous popularity when adapted into a hit Netflix series.
She has now offered readers a look at the cover art of the new book, which shows the stylised silhouette of a woman in the garb of a handmaid from her grimly misogynistic fictional world.
Here is the Front Cover for #thetestaments … The Back Cover will follow shortly… pic.twitter.com/Mj8JQuRgBO
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) January 31, 2019
Beneath a Twitter post containing the bright green and blue imagery of the cover art, the author joked that the novel – set 15 years after the events of the first – was “set in Ireland”. She added she was “joking”.
In a statement made last year, the author said: “Dear Readers: Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything. The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”
The blue-and-green shades reflect the colour The Wives wear in Atwood’s world, a class which has more privileges than the brutalised handmaids.
The Testaments is due to be published in September 2019.