The view from: Margaret Atwood / Toronto
Shining a light
Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood’s prescient science fiction has made her an icon of modern dissent.
On 16 March dozens of Israeli women wore deep-red cloaks and white bonnets to a protest against their government’s judicial-reform plans. They weren’t the first demonstraters to do so. Conceived by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood for her best-selling 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the outfit has become a fixture of anti-government demonstrations around the world. In the novel, a repressive regime requires “handmaids” – women who are considered the property of the state and forced to bear children – to wear these bonnets and cloaks; since the…
