Can't write 'Mills and Boons' or fantasy books: Margaret Atwood at Jaipur Literature Festival

JAIPUR: Canadian writer Margaret Atwood who is known for foraying into less explored genres of historical, speculative and dystopian fiction, says she wouldn't take a shot at realms of fantasy and romance.

"There are a number of things which I haven't done and wouldn't put my teeth into like the western novel or the 'Mills and Boons' kind of romantic fiction.

"I can't write about classic science fiction; about another planet. I also can't write about fantasy and I'm not good at dragons," Atwood says.

The Man Booker Prize winning author and poet who has 15 novels, 17 books of poetry and 10 non-fictions to her credit, is a guest of honour at the five-day long Jaipur Literature Festival here that began on January 21.

(Image: BCCL)
In her latest fiction "The Heart Goes Last," the 76-year-old has explored the emergence of a dystopian society following the social and economic collapse in 2008.

She narrates how her jobless protagonist couple (Charmaine and Stan), living out of a car, turn the tables with what in the book is "The Positron Project."

"The novel begins when they are offered an alternate lifestyle inside an experiment called the 'Positron Project.' You live inside a town which has a big wall around it and you don't get out for the duration of your signed period," she explains.

Charmaine and Stan find employment in a prison in Atwood's hypothetical town, Consilience where on alternating months, residents must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system.

"For one month you live in the town and act as a guard and the next month is spent in the prison and the month after that you're back," Atwood says.

The genesis of the idea behind the unique project lay in the concept of 'prisons for profit' prevalent in the US where the author has consciously set her story.

The acclaimed Canadian novelist says she had also participated in several prison protest marches before she set out to write the book.

"In the US, there are some pretty big prisons for profit for privately run establishments but the problem is that you don't really make the profits unless you keep the prisons full. Hence, it is an incentive to produce criminals," she says.


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