The Novel Index

Where to start with Margaret Atwood

Canadian novelist, born 1939. Won the Booker Prize in 2000 and 2019.

Best Margaret Atwood book to start with: The Handmaid's Tale (1985), on 7 of the 17 lists it could have made.

The Handmaid’s Tale is where to begin. It’s short and fast, and it’s the book that made her name. It is set in a near-future America run by a religious regime, and it reads as a thriller before it reads as a warning.

After that, The Testaments, the sequel she wrote decades later. It’s lighter and quicker, and it shared the Booker Prize. For something different, Alias Grace is based on a real murder case in 19th-century Canada, and Cat’s Eye is about a painter looking back on her childhood.

Oryx and Crake is her other big dystopia, set after a catastrophe, and it’s a good one to read if you liked the first book. Save The Blind Assassin for later. It won the Booker Prize and it’s very good, but it is long, with a story inside a story, and it’s best read once you know how she works.

Margaret Atwood
Photo: Collision Conf, CC BY 2.0

Margaret Atwood's books, ranked best first

The Handmaid's Tale comes first, on 7 of the 17 lists it could have made, followed by The Testaments and Oryx and Crake.

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Margaret Atwood's novels in order

The earliest on our lists is The Handmaid's Tale (1985), and the most recent is The Testaments (2019).

  1. 1985 The Handmaid's Tale
  2. 1988 Cat's Eye
  3. 1996 Alias Grace
  4. 2000 The Blind Assassin
  5. 2003 Oryx and Crake
  6. 2019 The Testaments

Novels on at least one of our 30 lists. Not a complete bibliography.

Also on one list

One more of Margaret Atwood's novels is on one of our lists.

Lists used on this page