Industry news
Atwood's sort-of trilogy
There appears to be some disagreement between McClelland & Stewart and Vintage Canada over the nature of Margaret Atwood’s upcoming novel, The Year of the Flood. M&S, which will publish the book in hardcover next September, is treating it as a standalone title, whereas Vintage, the imprint of Random House of Canada that will publish the book in trade paper sometime next year, is treating it as a sort-of sequel to Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx & Crake.
In M&S’s fall catalogue, the entry for The Year of the Flood makes no mention of Oryx & Crake. The Vintage fall catalogue, however, advertises a reissue of Oryx & Crake as “a new edition of the first book in the MaddAddam trilogy, to coincide with McClelland & Stewart’s publication of the second book, The Year of the Flood.” Furthermore, the newly commissioned cover art for Oryx – featuring a flower in full bloom – is unmistakably similar to that of M&S's new title.
Atwood’s editor at M&S, Ellen Seligman, said she was unaware of Vintage’s efforts to brand the new book as part of a trilogy. She acknowledged, however, that there are indeed several connections between Flood and Oryx: not only are both books works of speculative fiction, they are both set in the same dystopian world and feature several of the same characters. In essence, the new book is a prequel to Oryx & Crake, and there is even a moment when the timeframes of the two novels overlap.
Seligman insisted, however, that M&S will not be marketing Flood as part of a trilogy. “We’re publishing this as a standalone novel,” she said. “One does not have to have read Oryx & Crake to read this book.”
Atwood’s own take on the matter is similarly murky. In a recent interview with U.K. magazine The Bookseller, she explained that Flood should not be considered a prequel. “It’s not a sequel and it’s not a prequel,” she said. “It’s a ‘simultaneouel’ in that it takes place during the same time span and with a number of people in it who are peripheral in Oryx and Crake but are central in The Year of the Flood.”
RSS feed