Old Babes in the Wood

The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller

Select a format:

Retailers:

Amazon Blackwells Bookshop.org Foyles Hive Waterstones WHSmith

Summary

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

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

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, 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.

Learn More