Life Before Man

(Paperback)

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From the international bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale, Life Before Man is a tragicomic tale of love seeking to find its way in the wake of death. Life Before Man is a tragicomic tale of love seeking to find its way in the wake of death from the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments Elizabeth has just lost her latest lover to suicide while Nate, her husband, is working up to run off with Lesje. And Lesje She would rather be studying dinosaurs than distracted by men. As Elizabeth, Nate and Lesje find themselves imprisoned by walls of their own construction the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover hangs over them. Under his shadow, and in the spell of love, their lives will collide and entangle towards a single tragicomic climax. 'Tender, funny, absorbing, idiosyncratic, truthful, heartening... A liberating novel' Literary Review

Reviews

A modern saga...she has a fine ear for words and a quick wit for absudities * The Times *
An extraordinary imagination - witty, light-footed, realistic, yet with shooting insights into the nature of personality and love * Financial Times *
Tender, funny, absorbing, idiosyncratic, truthful, heartening... A liberating novel. It deserves a wide readership * Literary Review *
Mordant intelligence; formidable insight into the springs of human self-deception, self-aggrandisement and self-destruction; and an effortless, always vivid style * Spectator *
Beautifully written and constructed... A rich and elegant achievement * Listener *

Author Bio

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.