This book looks at Margaret Atwood's use of food motifs in speculative fiction. Focusing on six
novels - The Handmaid's 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 humanity's 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 Atwood's depictions of hostile environments. She also links food to hierarchy
dominance and oppression in Atwood's 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 Atwood's 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.
