The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood SIGNED! [U.K. FIRST EDITION] 2000 • Bloomsbury

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

U.K. FIRST EDITION • FIRST PRINTING [2000] BLOOMSBURY

*Rare UK 1st with official bookplate fixed to title page that has been hand signed by Margaret Atwood.

Hardcover with dust jacket in good reading condition with flaws: 

Dust jacket is in fair condition; shows wear to edges; and a few nicked spots near top of spine [see photos]  otherwise in tact; now housed in a new HQ brodart jacket protector. 

Book itself has a lean to spine due to a mild separation from spine along front endpaper.  Binding is still tight but sewn in green silken bookmark shows heavy wear.   Black boards have some mild staining along bottoms.   Bit of discoloration to text block.  Interior pages however are pretty immaculate and read beautifully.    

Winner of the 2000 Booker Prize, Margaret Atwood takes the art of storytelling to new heights in a dazzling novel that unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist. Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms and clichés of the 1930s and 1940s, The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience.

It opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic.