Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose--1983-2005

From one of the world s most passionately engaged literary citizens comes Writing with Intent, the largest collection to date of Margaret Atwood s nonfiction, ranging from 1983 to 2005. Composed of autobiographical essays, cultural commentary, book reviews, and introductory pieces written for great works of literature, this is the award-winning author's first book-length nonfiction publication in twenty years. Arranged chronologically, these writings display the development of Atwood s worldview as the world around her changes.

Included are the Booker Prize winning author s reviews of books by John Updike, Italo Calvino, Toni Morrison, and others, as well as essays in which she remembers herself reading Virginia Woolf s To the Lighthouse at age nineteen, and discusses the influence of George Orwell s 1984 on the writing of The Handmaid s Tale. Atwood s New York Times Book Review piece that helped make Orhan Pamuk s Snow a bestseller can be found here, as well as a look back on a family trip to Afghanistan just before the Soviet invasion, and her Letter to America, written after September 11, 2001. The insightful and memorable pieces in this book serve as a testament to Atwood s career, reminding readers why she is one of the most esteemed writers of our time.