Editions

Dancing Girls and Other Stories

Dancing Girls and Other Stories

From the international bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale, Dancing Girls and Other Stories showcases Margaret Atwood's masterly skill for storytelling.

Students, journalists, farmers, birdwatchers, ex-wives, adolescent lovers - and dancing girls. All ordinary people.

Or are they?

In brilliant flashes of fantasy, humour and unexpected violence, Margaret Atwood reveals the complexities of human relationships and maps the motivations we scarcely know we have within us. Populated with characters who evoke laughter, compassion, terror and recognition, Atwood’s stories show why she remains one of our greatest, most original storytellers.

'A remarkable collection' Sunday Times

Reviews

  • An acute and poetic observer of the eternal, universal, rum relationships between men and women

    The Times

  • The mind revealed in this collection of short stories is acutely perceptive, in love with language and capable of seeing significant connections between apparently disparate circumstances

    Sheila MacLeod, Evening Standard

  • If anyone has better insight into women and their central problem - men - than Margaret Atwood, and can voice them with as much wit, impact and grace, then they haven't started writing yet

    Daily Mail

  • Margaret Atwood's stories are fierce parables about the horror of city life and the power politics of relationships. The fierceness filters insidiously through the leisurely realism of her domestic interiors, clothes, meals, weather... A remarkable collection

    Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times

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About the Author

Margaret Atwood

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, went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women, and with the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. Its sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019 and was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. 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.

Margaret Atwood

Read more

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Features

‘Dear Next Generation: Thank you for showing up!’ Margaret Atwood answers questions from young activists of today

The author of The Testaments discusses the environment, gender equality and trans rights with some of the world’s leading young campaigners.
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News

Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo jointly awarded 2019 Booker Prize

Two Penguin Random House authors Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo have been jointly named as the winners of this year’s Booker Prize for The Testaments and Girl, Woman, Other respectively
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Features

Margaret Atwood: 'The Handmaid's Tale is being read very differently now'

Since The Handmaid’s Tale hit TV screens in 2017, Margaret Atwood’s already-prominent profile as a feminist has blazed ever brighter. Here she talks about how the novel came to fruition while she was living in Berlin, speaking up and what’s next for feminism. The sequel to the book The Testaments will publish 2019.

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