num_pages: 521
description: 'Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off the bridge.' Thus begins The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood's stunning new novel. Laura Chase's older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and eighty-two, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the First War. While coping with her unreliable body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin, a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following: as Iris says, she herself lives 'in the long shadow cast by Laura'.Sexually explicit for its time, The Blind Assassin describes a risky affair in the turbulent thirties between a wealthy young woman and a man on the run. During their secret meetings in rented rooms, the lovers concoct a pulp fantasy set on Planet Zycron. As the invented story twists through love and betrayal, so does the real one; while events in both move closer to war and catastrophe.By turns lyrical, outrageous, formidable, compelling and funny, this is a novel filled with deep humour and dark drama. It is Margaret Atwood at her breathtaking best.
language: English
title: The Blind Assassin
titlecomplete: The Blind Assassin
characters: Iris Chase, Winifred Prior, Reenie, Richard Griffen, Norval Chase, Myra Sturgess, Laura Chase, Alex Thomas
genres: Fiction, Historical, Science Fiction, Mystery, Canada, Literature, Classics, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 152895
places: Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Port Ticonderoga, Canada
awards: awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Shortlist, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Hammett Prize, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Puddly Award
category: New Novel, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Dublin Literary Award
category: Shortlist
publisher: Bloomsbury