"The long-awaited memoir of one of the most lauded and influential writers of our time, from her peripatetic childhood in Northern Ontario, through the writing of her seminal novel The Handmaid's Tale in occupied East Berlin, to her position today as revered truth-teller and literary icon. From the moment she published her first collection of poetry in 1966 -- sweeping up our most prestigious literary award while still a graduate student in Victorian literature at Harvard -- Margaret Atwood has been ahead of her time. Raised by ruggedly independent, scientifically minded parents (her father was a forest entomologist, her mother a former schoolteacher), Atwood spent half of every year in the deep forests of Quebec, living in tents or in houses hand-hewn by her father. Thrilling and unfettered, it was also isolating (on celebrating her eighth birthday: "It sounds forlorn. It was forlorn. It gets more forlorn.") and occasionally terrifying (alone for days with a 42-year-old pregnant mother, with no means of transportation or communication). From this unconventional origin, Atwood unspools her life story, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped the literary landscapes of our time, from the cruel year that spawned Cat's Eye to the Orwellian 1980s of Berlin, where conversations between writers were quickly ushered outdoors to evade the listening devices in any Westerner's home or hotel room. Chronicling oddball early jobs (teaching English to engineering students in a Quonset hut), a faltering early marriage, the bohemian gatherings and literary infighting of a generation of writers finding their voice, to her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and their only daughter, Atwood shares the stories, anecdotes, behind-the-scenes machinations, and turning points that have made her one of the most important writers of her era"-- Provided by publisher.