Elusive Interiority

The critical anthology Elusive Interiority: Atwood's Women addresses the growing importance of Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood. Recently described in a Guardian interview as “arguably the most famous living literary novelist in the world” Margaret Atwood is a prolific writer and versatile social critic. Atwood's writings cover themes that range from the mythical to the contemporary to the futuristic. Her novels while holding a mirror to concerns and anxieties that are specifically Canadian simultaneously offer a critique of society and the individuals that inhabit it, endowing her work with a topicality that is difficult to ignore. “One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the “nightmare” of history, nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities. God is in the details, they say. So is the Devil,” confesses Atwood in an article written in 2017 for The New York Times. So, it is hardly any wonder that Atwood's work continues to reinvent itself as graphic novels and on screen. This collection of essays focusses on the flawed, unempowered, often unsympathetic female protagonists in Atwood's novels and attempts to explore the inscape of the minds of these characters. It also maps their own attempts at self-discovery, often hampered by a multitude of factors. The interiority of these characters proves to be “elusive” not just for the reader but even to themselves!