Margaret Atwood Books in Order: Complete Bibliography & Best Starting Points

Margaret Atwood is one of the most important novelists writing in English — a Canadian writer whose work spans realistic fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction, and poetry, and who has been one of the central voices of literary feminism since the 1970s. She is the writer who gave the feminist dystopian novel its definitive form, and whose work engages with questions of gender, power, and environmental catastrophe with unfailing intelligence and formal sophistication.

Born in Ottawa in 1939, she began publishing poetry in 1961 and has produced over fifty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. She has twice won the Booker Prize (The Blind Assassin, 2000; The Testaments, 2019) and is among the most frequently discussed writers for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Where to Start

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

The essential starting point — the founding document of feminist dystopian fiction and the novel that established Atwood as a global literary figure. Gilead (the theocratic successor state to the United States) and its system of forced reproduction are built from historically verifiable practices of control over women’s bodies: Atwood documented each element’s real precedent. The novel is frightening not because it imagines the impossible but because it assembles existing possibilities into their logical conclusion.

Alias Grace (1996)

The best alternative starting point for readers who want Atwood’s historical fiction. Grace Marks, convicted of murder at sixteen in Victorian Canada, narrates her life to a young American doctor — narration that is always self-aware, partly strategic, and fundamentally unreliable. Atwood’s examination of how women’s inner lives are recorded, interpreted, and appropriated by the men who have institutional authority over them is the novel’s central argument.

The Booker Prize Novels

The Blind Assassin (2000)

Atwood’s most formally inventive novel — and the one that won her first Booker Prize. An elderly woman recalls her sister’s suicide in 1945 and the events that led to it; embedded in the narrative is a novel called The Blind Assassin written by her sister, and embedded in that novel is a science fiction story told by two illicit lovers. Three narrative frames, each illuminating the others. The most demanding of Atwood’s novels, and the most formally rewarding.

The Testaments (2019)

The sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale — set fifteen years later, narrated by three women (Aunt Lydia, the architect of Gilead’s ideology; a young woman growing up inside Gilead; a young woman who has grown up as a refugee in Canada). The Testaments is more plot-driven and more hopeful than The Handmaid’s Tale, and can be read independently, though it rewards readers who have read the earlier novel.

The MaddAddam Trilogy

Oryx and Crake (2003)

The first volume — set after a genetically engineered plague kills most of humanity. Snowman, one of the survivors, recalls in flashback his childhood friendship with Crake (the brilliant, amoral scientist who engineered the plague) and his love for Oryx (a woman both men loved). The novel is Atwood’s most concentrated examination of corporate capitalism, genetic engineering, and what happens when scientific intelligence is entirely divorced from ethical consideration.

The Year of the Flood (2009)

The second volume — set in the same world as Oryx and Crake, following two women who were members of God’s Gardeners (an eco-religious group) through the same period. The trilogy’s middle volume, best read after Oryx and Crake.

MaddAddam (2013)

The conclusion — bringing together the survivors of the first two volumes to build something new. Best read as the end of the trilogy.

Reading Order Recommendations

New to Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale → Alias Grace → The Blind Assassin.

Speculative Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale → Oryx and Crake → The Year of the Flood → MaddAddam → The Testaments.

Fiction first: Alias Grace → The Blind Assassin → The Handmaid’s Tale.