The worldwide acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood opened the 2013 fall season of the Ottawa International Writers Festival with a sold-out reading and on-stage conversation Sept. 24 in the Southminster United Church.
The 73-year-old winner of the Governor General’s Award, Man Booker Prize, and Giller Prize chatted with CBC’s Alan Neal about her new book MaddAddam, the final book of the apocalyptic MaddAddam trilogy, which Neal introduced as a “fine, fine novel.” Both the first book Oryx and Crake and the second book The Year of the Flood were major successes internationally.
Her insightfulness and humour, contrasted by her deep, soothing voice, gave an unexpected twist to her humble presence. As the festival’s development director Neil Wilson introduced her, she is “one of the greatest story-tellers on the planet.”
After an also sold-out lunchtime event—a fundraiser for children’s literacy—Atwood read from MaddAddam before sitting down to chat with Neal. She answered some of the readers’ questions and spoke more in-depth about her book.
The novel is set in an apocalyptic world with only a few human survivors, and bizarre, dystopian creations, such as the Crakers, the Painballers, and the Pigoons.
The Crakers are genetically altered human beings who lack humanity’s negative traits and who self-heal by purring. Although this may seem strange to us now, the festival’s artistic director Sean Wilson explained that many things Atwood wrote in Oryx and Crake a decade ago, such as the slicing of animal genes, have since come to happen.
“She takes what’s happening now and extrapolates a believable future,” he said.
For example, she said heard cats‘ purring had healing properties. But, for the time being, until we are capable of self-healing like the Crakers, Atwood has some advice.
“If you have a migraine headache, put a purring cat on it,” she said.
Wilson said when people come to see Atwood they “expect a certain kind of seriousness that is wonderfully not there.”
Wilson said he admired how she asks interesting questions in a new way and offers alternative opportunities to look at our culture.
Taking an example from the lunch event, he recalled one of Atwood’s “little thought experiments.”
During lunch she said we now generally perceive technology as a good thing, but that’s not always been the case. In 1940 it was much easier to forge a passport than today, she said. Forging passports for people escaping the Nazis saved many lives—something she said would be hard to do today.
Wilson described her as an extremely intelligent person who’s also very playful. He said he couldn’t help but have a great time reading MaddAddam.
“And that’s a strange thing to say about a book set after the end of the world,” he said.
