Margaret Atwood will perform alongside actors including Diana Quick and Roger Lloyd Pack of Only Fools and Horses 'Trigger' fame as she embarks on a six-country book tour to promote her new novel, The Year of the Flood.
A return to the post-apocalyptic world of Atwood's Booker-shortlisted novel, Oryx and Crake, the new book follows the story of God's Gardeners, a religion devoted to preserving all species, which has long predicted the Waterless Flood, a global pandemic obliterating most human life. In what her Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewart described as "an effort to break away from the traditional book tour", Atwood has scripted a one-hour staged reading, based on the novel, which will be performed in cities around the world.
The three-month, 40-date tour kicks off this weekend as Atwood boards the Queen Mary 2 to travel to the UK. She'll be appearing all around the country, starting in Edinburgh where Richard Holloway will play the part of Adam One, leader of God's Gardeners. In the Manchester show Atwood will perform with Samantha Giles, best known for Emmerdale, and Samantha Siddall from Shameless.
Actors Lloyd Pack and Quick will act in a performance of the novel in London, which will see the author narrating the story and the actors taking on parts from the book. Atwood included 14 hymns in the book, which have been set to music by composer Orville Stoeber, who will be performing in London on 2 and 3 September as well as at other events.
Atwood is also travelling to the US, Canada, Holland, Germany and Austria on the book tour, which she has tried to make as environmentally friendly as possible. She is travelling by train when she can and using local talent and food for her events, which will all raise money for environmental charities. In the UK, she is supporting the RSPB and BirdLife International.
"There have been many challenges, but it's a chance to break free from the traditional structure of a book tour," said Atwood. "I felt this particular novel deserved a more complex presentation. It's also a great chance to work with other creative minds and see their interpretation of the story come to light."
"Our general idea was to create the fundraising events in the image of the Gardeners, to the best of our ability. Keep it plain, keep it local, keep it cheap, keep it green – this was our motto."
She is also blogging and tweeting regularly about the tour, after seeing off two false Margaret Atwoods from Twitter. "The person using my name - Margaret Atwood - and my picture on Twitter is not me. Please stop imperonating me. Thanks," she wrote, adding six minutes later: "You can tell MargaretLAtwood really is me, because I made a typo - should be 'impersonating,' 'Imperonating' is pretending to be Evita."
