The Blind Assassin Author: [Canada] Margaret Atwood Shanghai Translation Publishing House

Margaret Atwood, known as the "Queen of Canadian Literature", is a diligent and prolific writer. She has published 14 poetry collections, 11 novels, 5 short story collections and 3 literary reviews. She has also edited collections such as "Oxford Canadian English Poetry" and "Oxford Canadian English Short Stories". In addition, she has written many works for radio, television, drama, and children's literature. She has won almost all international literary awards except the Nobel Prize in Literature and countless other awards and honors. She has been awarded honorary doctorates by more than a dozen domestic and foreign universities such as the University of Toronto and enjoys a high international reputation. Her works have been translated into more than 30 languages.

Atwood published her first poem at the age of 19. She is good at elevating daily experience to a metaphysical level. Her poems are not only delicate and feminine, but also full of profound insights. They are very influential in the Canadian and British and American poetry circles, and have won many important literary awards.

Since she published her first novel, The Edible Woman, in 1969, her works have won numerous awards, which has earned her wide international reputation. Her three excellent novels, The Handmaid's Tale (1985), Cat's Eye (1988), and Alias ​​Grace (1996), have been nominated for the Booker Prize three times, and she finally won the highest literary award with her tenth novel, The Blind Assassin. Atwood is also a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Both the public and the literary world believe that it is only a matter of time before she wins the prize.

Atwood's influence not only transcends national borders, but also transcends the field of literature. She has always been very concerned about the ubiquitous and powerful influence of American culture on Canada and Canada's increasing Americanization tendency. In order to resist this tendency, she strongly supported Anansi Publishing House, which aims to promote independent Canadian national culture, and did a lot of practical work. She helped to establish the Canadian Writers Association and served as the president of the association. She also served as the president of the Canadian Center of the International PEN. In addition, she published poems, short stories, reviews, etc. in many internationally renowned newspapers and magazines such as The New Yorker. She was also invited to recite and give speeches in the United States, Britain, Germany, Australia, Russia and other countries to expand Canada's influence. Since the 1980s, she began to pay attention to another field - environmental protection, showing a strong ecological awareness, and won honors and awards in environmental protection and social activities for her creations, discussions and actions in this regard. In the past 30 years or so, she has been active in the world literary world as a spokesperson for Canadian literature and was listed as the fifth of the "100 Most Influential Canadians of the 20th Century".

Atwood's works can be divided into four historical stages: "early works", "works in the 1970s", "works in the 1980s" and "works since the 1990s". In the "early works", the poetry collection "Circle Game" won her the Governor General's Award and made her stand out in the Canadian literary world; since then, Canada's first-class publishing houses have actively opened their doors to her; at the same time, the media's attention has never left her. In the "works in the 1970s", the publication of "Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature" has aroused controversy with mixed reviews, and then triggered a series of discussions on Canadian literature and literary criticism, objectively making the book a literary criticism monograph with an influence far beyond its own value. Because the publication of "Survival" is both the inevitable result of the development of Canadian nationalist thought and, in turn, it has promoted the development of this thought. The publication of this book has objectively become a milestone in the development of Canadian literature and culture. Among the "works of the 1980s", The Handmaid's Tale, known as the "feminist 1984", was extremely successful, winning the second Governor General's Award and numerous awards and honors, greatly expanding her readership, winning the international mainstream market, and making her a world celebrity. Among the "works since the 1990s", it was praised as "profound, dramatic, and exquisitely structured".