The writer's tale

CANADA: Her timing couldn’t be better. Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, best known for novels like The Handmaid’s Tale (Der Report der Magd), has produced a new book in the midst of the credit crisis. Called Payback, the nonfiction work is all about debt.

“I saw it coming,” Atwood says of the current financial crisis. “But I didn’t know when it would come,” she told Bloomberg News.

“I saw it coming,” Margaret Atwood says of the current financial crisis. “But I didn’t know when it would come.”

The author, who is used to being interviewed for literature and arts publications, is suddenly appearing on the financial pages of newspapers like The New York Times or International Herald Tribune. She uses personal anecdotes as well as literary and mythical references to describe attitudes to debt through the ages.

Atwood says that, for most of human history, people were warned not to go into debt. That changed, she said, with the introduction of credit cards. “They would mail them to you and then you suddenly felt richer.”

Atwood predicts that the financial crisis will mean the end of John McCain’s presidential hopes. “He represents the Republican party that people are so furious with right now because they let this happen. They encouraged this kind of behaviour,” she comments.

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