The Handmaid’s Tale, a story about a dystopian American future where fertile women are forced into child-bearing servitude, has been running for two seasons on Hulu, with a third on the way. Roughly speaking, the first season of the show adapts Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, while the second goes beyond the source material and comes up with new stories set in the same world and involving the same characters. It’s sort of like what happened with Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, only Hulu knew it was going to overtake Atwood’s original book, which was never intended to have a sequel.
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Until now. Today, Atwood took to Twitter to announce The Testaments, a book that will pick up 15 years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale. “Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book,” she wrote. “Well, almost everything. The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”
Yes indeed to those who asked: I’m writing a sequel to The #HandmaidsTale. #TheTestaments is set 15 years after Offred’s final scene and is narrated by three female characters. It will be published in Sept 2019. More details: https://t.co/e1umh5FwpX pic.twitter.com/pePp0zpuif
— Margaret E Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) November 28, 2018
What about “the world we’ve been living in” has inspired Atwood? The Canadian author has been up front in crediting the modern success of The Handmaid’s Tale to the American political climate, with the Trump administration, for example, enacting rules and regulations to discourage abortion or make it harder for organizations that offer abortions to get funding. And around the world, women have taken to wearing Handmaid uniforms at events to protest the actions of a variety of governments. The story is definitely resonating, so it seems a good time for a sequel.
As Atwood said, The Testaments will be out in September of 2019. We can also expect the third season of Hulu’s show sometime next year.
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h/t The A.V. Club