The Blind Assassin is an award winning and bestselling novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. Set in Canada, it is narrated from the present day, referring back to events that span the twentieth century. Cover of the Margaret Attwood novel, The Blind Assassin, fair use This image is a book cover. ... Margaret Eleanor Atwood, OC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer. ... For other uses, see Country (disambiguation). ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Look up historical fiction in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... McClelland and Stewart is a Canadian publishing company. ... is the 245th day of the year (246th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ... A compact disc or CD is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio. ... “ISBN” redirects here. ... This article is about the literary concept. ... Margaret Eleanor Atwood, OC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer. ... McClelland and Stewart is a Canadian publishing company. ... See also: 1999 in literature, other events of 2000, 2001 in literature, list of years in literature. ...

The book won the Booker Prize in 2000 and the Hammett Prize in 2001. It was also nominated for Governor General's Award in 2000, Orange Prize for Fiction, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2002. ^[1] Time Magazine named it the best fiction novel of 2000 and included it in All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, also known as the Man Booker Prize, or simply the Man Booker, is one of the worlds most important literary prizes, and awarded each year for the best original novel written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland in... Since their creation in 1937, the Governor Generals Literary Awards have become one of Canadas most prestigious prizes, awarded in both French and English in seven categories: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Drama, Childrens Literature-Text, Childrens Literature-Illustration, and Translation. ... The Orange Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdoms most prestigious literary prizes, awarded annually for the best original full-length novel by a female author of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK in the preceding year. ... The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is the largest and most international prize of its kind for a single work -published in English. ... Time (whose trademark is capitalized TIME) is a weekly American newsmagazine, similar to Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. ...

Plot summary

The novel centres around the protagonist, Iris Chase, and her sister Laura, who committed suicide immediately after the Second World War. Iris, now an old woman, recalls the events and relationships of her childhood, youth and middle age, as well as her unhappy marriage to Richard Griffen, a rival of her industrialist father. Interwoven into the novel is a story within a story, a roman à clef attributed to Laura and published by Iris about Alex Thomas, a politically radical author of pulp science fiction who has an ambiguous relationship with the sisters. That novel itself contains a story within a story, the eponymous Blind Assassin, a science fiction story told by Alex's fictional counterpart to that novel's protagonist. A protagonist is the main figure of a piece of literature or drama and has the main part or role. ... For other uses, see Suicide (disambiguation). ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Business magnate. ... A story within a story is a literary device or conceit in which one story is told during the action of another story. ... A roman à clef or roman à clé (French for novel with a key) is a novel describing real-life events behind a façade of fiction. ... This article is about inexpensive fiction magazines. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... An eponym is a person (real or fictitious) whose name has become identified with a particular object or activity. ...

The novel takes the form of a gradual revelation, illuminating both Iris' youth and her old age before coming to the pivotal events of her and Laura's lives around the time of the Second World War. As the novel unfolds, and the novel-within-a-novel becomes ever more obviously inspired by real events, it becomes clear that Laura's novel isn't what it seems; it is eventually revealed that Iris herself, not Laura, was the novel-within-a-novel's author and protagonist.

The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga and in the Toronto of the 1930s and 1940s. It is a work of historical fiction with the major events of Canadian history forming an important backdrop to the novel. Greater verisimilitude is given through a series of newspaper articles that comment on events and on the novel's characters from a distance. Look up historical fiction in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Quotations

What had she been thinking of as the car sailed off the bridge, then hung suspended in the afternoon sunlight, glinting like a dragonfly for that one instant of held breath before the plummet? Of Alex, of Richard, of bad faith, of our father and his wreckage; of God, perhaps, and her fatal, triangular bargain. (4)

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn't necessarily get you the truth... The living bird is not its labeled bones. (395)

In this daydream, Winifred and her friends, wreaths of money on their heads, are gathered around Sabrina's frilly white bed while she sleeps, discussing what they will bestow upon her. She's already been given the engraved silver cup from Birks, the nursery wallpaper with a frieze of domesticated bears, the starter pearls for her single-strand pearl necklace, and all the other golden gifts, perfectly comme il faut, that will turn to coal when the sun rises. Now they're planning the orthodontist and the tennis lessons and the piano lessons and the dancing lessons and the exclusive summer camp. What hope has she got? (439)

I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you? (448)

See also

• Southern Ontario Gothic

Southern Ontario Gothic is a sub-genre of the Gothic novel genre and a feature of Canadian literature that comes from Southern Ontario. ...

References

1. ^ Publisher's page on The Blind Assassin