Food in Margaret Atwoods Speculative Fiction

This book looks at Margaret Atwoods use of food motifs in speculative fiction. Focusing on six novels The Handmaids Tale and The Testaments, the Maddaddam trilogy, and The Heart Goes Last Katarina Labudova explores the environmental, ecological, and cultural questions at play and the possible future scenarios which emerge for humanitys survival in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic conditions. Labudova argues that food has special relevance in these novels and that characters hunger, limited food choices, culinary creativity and eating rituals are central to Atwoods depictions of hostile environments. She also links food to hierarchy, dominance and oppression in Atwoods novels, and foregrounds the problem of hunger, both psychological or physical, caused by pollution and loss of contact with the natural and authentic. The book shows how Atwoods writing draws from a range of genres, including apocalyptic fiction, science fiction, speculative fiction, dystopia, utopia, fairy tale, myth, and thriller and how food is an important, highly versatile motif linking these intertextual threads.