Atwood's first new fiction publication since The Testaments, this deeply personal collection includes a stunning sequence that follows a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love -- and what comes after

The stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords.

They feature beloved cats, a confused snail, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, philosopher-astronomer-mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, a cabal of elderly female academics, and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales.

The glorious range of Atwood's creativity and humanity is on full beam in these tales, which by turns delight, illuminate and quietly devastate.

'Gripping... a writer in full possession of her powers' Financial Times

'These reflections on marriage, mortality and many-tentacled aliens show Atwood's mastery of the short form' Guardian

'She's Margaret Atwood, and she can do anything' Ann Patchett

'There is no greater living writer' Daily Telegraph

'The outstanding novelist of our age' Sunday Times

'A living legend' New York Times Book Review

About the Author

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 shared the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade, and in 2022 Burning Questions, a collection of essays, was a Sunday Times bestseller.

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.

Reviews
Vitality and virtuosity have been the hallmarks of Atwoods literary career - and, as Old Babes in the Wood, published in her 84th year, shows, triumphantly continue to be so... Mortality shadows the book. Vivacity makes it shine -- Peter Kemp * Sunday Times *
If you consider yourself and Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You've been missing out * New York Times Book Review *
Atwood shows mastery of the short form . . . [The] stories unwrap what TS Eliot called the gifts reserved for age. There are chips and fragments of lives, full of sass and sadness -- Sam Leith * Guardian *
A gripping read... Old Babes in the Wood is further evidence of a writer in full possession of her powers. Atwood will never struggle to find readers, but this collection really is worth their attention * Financial Times *
Atwood... is a brilliant and spiky storyteller who can seamlessly turn big issues into page-turners... These are Atwood's most personal tales so far * Sunday Times *
The Booker winner writes beautifully about ageing and death . . . the silence after the best stories here is akin to how she describes the aftermath of a calamitous event -- John Self * The Times *
Nell and Tig are the ageing couple whose small dramas and deep feelings bookend this new story collection... brought achingly to life and sharpened by Atwood's dry wit and wily wisdom * Mail on Sunday *
To be honest, we would read anything this woman writes, but Old Babes in the Wood is one of her best * Glamour *
This set of interweaving short stories is a perfect way to get a more bite-sized read... There's a story in here that everyone can relate to * Woman & Home *
The inimitable author of The Handmaid's Tail is spectacular at short stories * i *
Atwood...writes infectiously... page after page proving that...[her] lavish literary talents remain wholly undiminished * Reader's Digest *
[Old Babes in the Wood] showcase[s] Atwood's spiky wit and imagination * Sunday Express *
The 15 stories in this collection from the stellar Margaret Atwood are book-ended by the touching, tender, grief-tinged tales of Tig and Nell -- Eithne Farry * Daily Mail *
There are authors we turn to because they can uncannily predict our future; there are authors we need for their skillful diagnosis of our present; and there are authors we love because they can explain our past. And then there are the outliers: those who gift us with timelines other than the one we're stuck in, realities far from home. If anyone has proved, over the course of a long and wildly diverse career, that she can be all four, it's Margaret Atwood . . . Long may she reign * New York Times Book Review *
As affecting as any of Atwood's strongest work * Wired *



Book Information
ISBN 9781784744854
Author Margaret Atwood
Format Hardback
Page Count 272
Imprint Chatto & Windus
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 480g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 162mm * 27mm