Margaret Atwood's The Testaments shortlisted for Waterstones' 2019 book of the year
Jane van Koeverden | | Posted: October 30, 2019 4:26 PM | Last Updated: October 30, 2019
The British book chain has chosen 11 titles for its shortlist
Margaret Atwood's The Testaments is on the 2019 Waterstones book of the year shortlist, alongside titles like Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams and No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg.
The British bookshop chain annually curates a shortlist of "the year's finest books" based on nominations from their booksellers.
The winner will be announced on Nov. 27, 2019, as chosen by a panel of Waterstones employees.
The Testaments, a surprise sequel to Atwood's 1985 book The Handmaid's Tale, returns to the world of Gilead, the dystopic society where the first novel's narrator survived oppressive conditions. It features the testimonies of three women — an architect of Gilead, a young woman growing up in the society and another young woman living in Canada.
The novel was one of two books to receive the 2019 Booker Prize. Bernardine Evaristo was the other winner for the novel Girl, Woman, Other. It has set Canadian sales records since being released on Sept. 10, 2019.
The 11 books nominated for Waterstones book of the year for 2019 include novels, nonfiction and children's books.
The complete shortlist is:
- The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
- Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
- The Binding by Bridget Collins
- Underland by Robert Macfarlane
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
- The House Without Windows by Barbara Newhall Follett
- Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
- Lanny by Max Porter
- On the Origin of Species by Sabina Radeva
- Dishoom by Shamil Thakrar
- No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg
The 2018 winner was Sally Rooney's novel Normal People.