KS5/Adult LRC Dual Book Recommendation - The Booker Prize 2019 Winners: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Undoubtedly the most highly-anticipated book of 2019, The Testaments is the landmark sequel to Margaret Atwood’s seminal masterpiece, The Handmaid’s Tale. Picking up ten years after its predecessor’s tantalisingly open-ended conclusion, The Testaments promises a new window into Atwood’s dystopian world, as seen through the eyes of three women of Gilead. Having previously won the Booker Prize with The Blind Assassin, The Testaments now sees Atwood become the fourth novelist to win the prize twice in its illustrious fifty year history.

A luminescent novel, told with a piercing clarity, Evaristo’s panorama of modern black womanhood resounds with an astonishing diversity of voice and character as seen across a changing century. Tracking the lives and loves of a dozen British women through generations and social classes, Girl, Woman, Other weaves a distinctive, illuminating tapestry of modern British life. ‘This is a story for our times,’ comments the New Statesman. ‘If you want to understand modern day Britain, this is the writer to read.’